
k 




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B BPuTJ-Ssell PuKLisKei'. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 



CHARLES DICKENS 



% WiommB |it^m0rial Bahmt. 



BY 

M 

PHEBE A^. HANAFORD, 

AUTHOR OF " LITE OF PEABODY," " LIFE OF LINCOLN," ETC, 



310 



I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and 
lessons of our Saviour; because I feel it." — Charles Dickens. 



/ 

BOSTON : 
PUBLISHED BY B. B. RUSSELL, 55 CORNHILL. 

SAN FRANCISCO: A. L. BANCROFT & CO. 
TORONTO, ONT.: A. H. HOVEY. 

1871. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, 

By PHEBE a. HANAFORD, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



BOSTON : 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY RAND, AVERY, & FRYH. 



'\ i 4 



SX- 



To 

THE WOMEN OF AMERICA, 

Cfjis Folumc, 

WHICH CONTAINS A RECORD OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 

WITH TENDER AND TOUCHING PASSAGES FROM HIS WORKS, WHICH ARE 

CALCULATED TO AWAKEN PURE AND SACRED EMOTIONS IN 

THE HEARTS OF ALL WHO PERUSE THEM, 

IS 

J\rOlV INSCRIBED, 



PEEFAOE. 



r^HARLES DICKENS was a popular writer. "The common 
^-^ people heard him gladly," and read his books with an avidity 
which showed that he reached the heart with his graphic and sympa- 
thizing pen. His genius was evident to all classes of readers ; and edi- 
tions of his attractive novels have been so multiplied and so varied, that 
they are found in the houses of the lofty and the lowly. The Queen 
of England gives his admirable creations place in her private library ; 
and the humble cottager on her broad lands prizes also his copy of 
" Nicholas Nickleby " and " Oliver Twist ; " and both read his books 
with a zest which shows that the genius of the writer claimed the 
admiration of the reader, and his tender sympathy with lowly worth 
touched answering chords in many a humari heart. 

This world-wide interest in the works of Dickens has induced the 
publication, in many forms, of his books, and, now that he has passed 
from earth, will induce the publication of many sketches of his life, 
more or less exhaustive. On the shelves of booksellers, on both sides 
the Atlantic, will soon be seen biographies, sketches, and other memo- 
rial volumes, giving some picture, more or less distinct, of the earthly 
career of this prince among novelists. 

This volume is one of the many. It is not pretended that it is 
exhaustive : it is not designed to be such. Across the broad waters,- 
among his own immediate friends, perhaps in his own family circle, will 
be found a biographer wholly prepared to do full justice to the man 

6 



6 PREFACE. 

and the author. Meanwhile, his admirers this side the Atlantic, 
speaking the language whose literature he has helped to enrich, will 
render loving tribute to his genius, and a grateful acknowledgment 
of the pleasure experienced in perusing his masterly creations, by 
publishing various volumes in his memory, briefly sketching his life, 
and pointing out some of the most beautiful and excellent passages in 
his numerous books. This is what is attempted here. 

Women have greatly enjoyed his writings. They have wept over 
little Nell, and Paul Dombey, and poor Joe ; they have laughed 
over the inimitable wit which flashed along the pages of Pickwick 
and others of his works ; and so it is but right and proper that they 
should have their memorial volumes. The simple claim which this 
book urges is, that it belongs to that class, and is issued with the 
hope that women will enjoy it, and be benefited by its perusal ; being 
at least lifted into closer sympathy with one who saw the pathetic 
and the ridiculous very clearly, and used his power to depict both 
for the benefit of humanity at large, and the poorer classes in particu- 
lar. Some writers see, to use Shakspeare's familiar words, — 

" Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." 

And Charles Dickens saw in rich and poor, in high and low, in Eng- 
lishman and American, in men and women, in boys and girls, some- 
thing which his unique pen could portray for the advantage of his 
readers. Such an individual, faulty as he is sometimes confessed to 
be both as a man and a writer, should be prized in a nation. His 
death is a calamity to his readers, and a loss to the literature of his 
age ; and with this sentiment prominent in the writer's heart i 3 
prepared this Memorial. ^^ P. A. H. 

New Haven, Conn. 



CONTENTS. 



PAOK. 

Preface • • • . . 6 

CHAPTER I. 

EARLY LIFE. 

Birthplace. — Youthful Labors. — The Attorney's Clerk.— Finding his Place.— 

Beginnings. — The Young Reporter 9 

CHAPTER II. 
ADVANCING. 

Steadily On. — Sketches by Boz. — Wine-drinking Countries. — Our Next-door 

Neighbors. — The Drunkard's G-rave. — Sporting Papers . . . .14 

CHAPTER III. 

CLIMBING THE LADDER. 

Willis's Description of Dickens. — His Inimitable Humor. — Emerson's 
Criticism. — Hugh Miller's Opinion. — London Review. — Pickwick Pa- 
pers. — Sam Weller's Valentine. — The Ivy Green. — Death in the Prison, 46 

CHAPTER IV. 

FAMOUS. 

The Novelist. — E. P. Whipple's Testimony,- Oliver Twist. — Asking for 

More, — Pauperism in England. — Nancy Sykes. — Jew Fagin ... 71 

CHAPTER V. 

ONE OF HIS BEST. 

Nicholas Nickleby, — Opinion of "The Methodist." — Thackeray's. — The 

Squeers School. — Henry Ward Beecher's Testimony , . . . 109 

CHAPTER VI. 

OTHER NOVELS. 

Master Humph rey's Clock .— London Years Ago . — Country Picture . — Barnaby 
Rudge. — Old Curiosity Shop. — Death of Little Nell. — Mr. Dickens's 
Speech. — Funeral of Little Nell. — Landor's Testimony. — Child-Pictures 
from Dickens, — Memoirs of Grimaldi 141 

CHAPTER Vn. 

FIRST VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES. 

Testimony of the New -York Tribune. — American Notes for General 
Circulatio^^ Wholesome Truths for a Nation. — Slavery. — Bad Man- 
ners, — AUeghanies, — Niagara 175 

CHAPTER Vni, 

CHRISTMAS CAROLS. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, — Pictures from Italy. — First Carol. — Tiny Tim. — The 

Chimes. — Cricket on the Hearth , . 208 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT ARE THE AVILD WAVES SAYING ? 

The Daily News. — Dombey and Son. — Death of Littlo Paul . . . .290 
CHAPTER X. 

HIS MASTERPIECE. 

The Reality of Fiction . — David Copper field. — Opinion of Fraser's Magazine. — 

The Shipwreck. — Ui'iah lleep. — Little Em'ly. — A Lone, Lorn Creetur . 307 

CHAPTER Xr. 
RETURNS TO HIS EARLV PRACTICE. 

Bleak House. — Death of Poor Jo. — Uncommercial Traveller .... 319 
CHAPTER Xn. 

EATER WORKS. 

LitlleDorritt. — Hard Times. — Dr. Marigold 324 

CHAPTER XIU. 

AS AN EDITOR. 

Household Words. — All the Year Round. — Great Expectations. — Tale of 

Two Cities ^ • . . 328 

CHAPTER XIV. 
AMERICAN POPULARITV. 

The Diamond Edition. — Portraits of Mr. Dickeas. — Our Mutual Friend . . 335 
CHAPTKR XV. 

SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. 

Dickens as a Reader and Actor. — His First Appearance in Boston. — His Last 

Reading in Boston 340 

CHAPTER XVI. 
DICKENS AT HOME. 

His Domestic Relations. — Gad's Hill. — Shakspeare's Mention of it . . . 353 
CHAPTER XVH. 

THE UNFINISHED STORY. 

Mystery of Edwin Drood. — Sudden Illness. —Death ...... 368 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

liAST WORDS. 

Last Letters of Mr. Dickens. — The Queen's Sorrow. — A Nation mourns. — 

The Funeral of the Great Novelist 377 

CHAPTER XIX. 
ajierica's sympathy. 
How the News of Mr. Dickens's Death was received. — Henry Ward Beecher's 

Sermon. — The Voice of the Press 386 

CHAPTER XX. 

the influence OF CHARLES DICKENS. 

Sympathy for the Poor. — Love for the Young. — The Golden Rule . . .395 



LIFE AND WEITINGS 



CHARLES DICKENS. 



CHAPTER I. 



EARLY LIFE. 



Birthplace. — Youthful Labors. — The Attorney's Clerk. — Finding his Place. — Be- 
ginnings. — The Young Reporter. 

" There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will." 

Hamlet. 
" There is a spirit in men, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them under- 
Btanding." — Job xxx. ii. 8. 

CROSS the broad waters to the daiiohter- 
land has been borne once more the tidinofs 
of a sudden and lamented departure ; and 
the two nations that have so lately united 
in sympathy and in posthumous honor to a 
great philanthropist now mourn unitedly the loss of 
a gi'cat novelist. George Peabody and Charles Dickens 
are honored on both sides the Atlantic, and wherever 
else their native tongue is spoken, or the value of a 




10 LIFE AND WKITINGS OF 

benevolent heart or a genius for story-telling is known. 
The departure of Charles Dickens at least has awa- 
kened sad emotions in many hearts. Well does " The 
Independent " call it ''The General Sorrow," and go 
on to say, — 

"It makes our hand quiver to write the obituary 
of Charles Dickens. Death jarred two nations when 
it struck this man. What reader did not claim this 
author for a friend ? Which of his critics was not also 
his lover? Both in Encrland and America, there are 
multitudes of men, women, and children, who, as long 
as they live, will remember exactly where they were, 
what they were doing, and what hour of the clock it 
was, when they heard the sudden announcement that 
Charles Dickens was no more. The telegraph that car- 
ried the news of his fatal illness flew in one sad moment 
round the whole earth, to spread a shadow on all Eng- 
lish-speaking lands. The first answering voice of the 
American press acknowledged that the mournful mes- 
saore was the saddest which the Atlantic cable had ever 
conducted to our coasts. Almost everybody whom we 
have met since Friday morning has seemed bearing in 
his hands a chaplet for the dead man's bier. No other 
author ever came so near as Dickens to the hearts of the 
million ; and his death has been like the opening of a 
grave at their very feet. A hundred pens, in writing 
their first notice of the event, spontaneously said (and 
moro truly than Dr. Johnson said of the death of Gar- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 11 

rick) that it ' eclipsed the gayety of nations.' There 
have been many greater men in literature than Dick- 
ens, but none who were ever so universally loved and 
mourned. To be loved in life, and mourned in death ! 
What better fortune can the earth afford to any one 
who lives or dies ? This is the most successful of all 
success. Charles Dickens achieved it. 

" What manner of man, therefore, must he have been ? 
Of what fibre was his genius made ? He was the John 
Bunyan of the secular world. He was the unpriestly 
preacher to the wayside multitude, rebuking them for 
their follies, vices, and deceits. His novels are little 
gospels of charity and good- will to all mankind. And 
great was his reward. ' The common people heard him 
gladly.' To ^vin the world's ear is a nobler victory than 
to win a nation's throne. He was a British subject 
whose empire was wider than a British sovereign's. He 
knocked at the common heart of the Anglo-Saxon race, 
opened it like a gate, entered in, took possession, and 
will not go hence even to his burial, but will there re- 
main affectionately enshrined for years to come." 

The many thousands who have read the incompara- 
ble works of Charles Dickens's ready pen, while mourn- 
ing over the fact that his farewell readings in England 
were indeed as a farewell to all the earth, are eager to 
read any memorial sketch of their favorite novehst ; and 
to them, at least, it will be of interest to know that he 
was born at Landport, Portsmouth, England, in the year 



12 LIFE AND WniTIXGS OP 

of the second war between England and America, 
1812. 

His father's name was John Dickens, and he held a 
position in the Navy Pay Dej)artment. At the close of 
the war with the United States, Mr. Dickens removed 
to London, having received a pension upon retiring. 
He there became connected with one of the daity jour- 
nals as* reporter of parliamentary debate^. As time 
rolled on, his son Charles became of years sufficient to 
justify him in marking out a path in life for him ; and 
he chose that of the law, and placed Charles in an at- 
torney's, office as clerk. But the study of law was dis- 
tasteful to the youthful genius, whose talents for writ- 
ing were early evident. Literary occupations were his 
delight ; and, though he was a diligent student, it Avas 
human nature and human life that he preferred to study, 
and then depict with his glowing pen. He was not the 
first, by any means, to whose young mind the occupation 
chosen by a parent Avas utterly devoid of attraction. 
The attorney's clerk only found his place when he left 
off poring over " Blackstone," " Coke upon Littleton," 
and kindred volumes, weighty with legal lore, and be- 
gan to picture those scenes which live in the reader's 
memory forever. God called him to be a Avriter ; andj 
until he found his place, he was not content. 

Yet he did not commence at once to write novels, and 
to display his marvellous power in delineating char- 
acter, and creating personages in literature that will 



CHARLES DICKENS. 13 

never die. He began, as many a bright star in the lit- 
erary firmament has begun, by shining first with the 
occasional beams of a newspaper contributor. He be- 
came connected with " The Morning Chronicle," as a 
reporter. This was a newspaper of great popularity, 
under the management of Mr. John Black, who saw at 
once the ability of the young reporter, and gave him 
ample opportunity to display his talent for making word 
pictures, and for calling forth both tears and smiles, by 
publishing in his paper the " Sketches of English Life 
and Character;" which were collected and reprinted 
under the title of '' Sketches by Boz," in 1836 and 183T. 
"Boz " was his signature in '' The Morning Chronicle ;" 
and he gave, as the reason for his use of it, that it " was 
the nickname of a pet child, — a younger brother, — 
whom I had dubbed Moses, in honor of the ' Vicar of 
Wakefield,' which, being facetiously pronounced through 
the nose, became Bases, and, being shortened, Boz,^ Boz 
was a very familiar household word to me long before I 
was an author, and so I came to adopt it." This begin- 
ning of his true work showed both the writer and his 
readers that English literature could claim as a chai'm- 
ing story-writer young Charles Dickens. 



CHAPTER II. 



A.DVANCING. 



Steadily On.— Sketches by Boz. — Wine-drinking Countries. — Our Next-door 
Neighbors. — The Drunkard's Grave. — Sporting Papers. 

" Though a pledge I had to shiver, 
And the longest ever was, 
Ere his vessel leaves our river, 
I AVould drink a health to Boz." 



Hood. 



" The pen of a ready writer." 



Psalm xlv. 1. 




S already intimated, Charles Dickens was 
persevering, and kept steadily on in the 
path of literature, which to him was most 
alluring. He held ''the pen of a ready 
writer ; " and he was disposed to use it in 
the interests of morality and good order. He showed, 
in the " Sketches by Boz," a faculty of illustration 
which marked him as one who must be successful. The 
pathos and humor which blended in his tales were even 
then seen to be remarkable. From those sketches, these 
pages are enriched by extracts proving the truth of the 
assertion, which, to the reader familiar with the works 

14 



CMAULES DICKENS. 15 

of Dickens, needs no proof. These extracts are far from 
indicating that Dickens favored intemperance, or failed 
to see its folly and sin. He had himself the bad habits 
of xin Englishman who is not in favor of total absti- 
nence ; but it is not right to say of him that he encour- 
aGfed the drunkard in his evil course. While the be- 
lievers in the duty of total abstinence cannot but regret 
that the great novelist did not use his powerful pen 
in favor of teetotalism, they cannot but acknowledge 
that he left on record evidence that he did not approve 
of a career of intemperance. His testimony in refer- 
ence to Avine countries is often adduced by temperance 
lecturers, as conclusive against the wine-drinking habits 
of many foreign lands. It first appeared in '' Household 
Words," Dickens's journal, and has been copied into 
" The Good Templar," an American temperance paper, 
as an evidence that Charles Dickens did not favor the 
prevalence of wine-shops. These are the words : — 

" The wine-shops are the colleges and chapels of the 
poor in France. History, morals, politics, jurispru- 
dence, and literature, in iniquitous forms, are all taught 
in these colleges and chapels, where professors of evil 
continually deliver those lessons, and where hymns are 
sung nightly to the demons of demoralization. In those 
haunts of the poor, theft is taught as the morality of 
propriety, falsehood as speech, and assassination as the 
justice of the people. It is in the wine-shop the cab- 



16 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

man is taught to think it heroic to shoot the middle- 
class man who disputes his fare. It is in the wine-shop 
the workman is taught to admire the man Avho stabs his 
faithless mistress. It is in the wine-shop the doom is 
pronounced of the employer who lowers the pay of the 
employed. The wine-shop breeds, in a physical atmos- 
phere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and. 
vengeance, the men of crime and revolution. Hunger 
is proverbially a bad counsellor, but drink is worse." 

From his " Sketches by Boz," the following is given, 
as an example of the mingling of humor and pathos so 
noticeable in his writings. It is entitled, — 

« OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBORS. 

" We are very fond of speculating, as we walk 
tlirougli a street, on the character and pursuits of the 
people who inhabit it ; and nothing so materially assists 
us in these speculations as the appearance of the house- 
doors. The various expressions of the human coun- 
tenance afford a beautiful and interesting study ; but 
there is something in the physiognomy of street-door 
knockers, almost as characteristic, and nearly as infal- 
lible. Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we 
contemplate the features of his knocker with the great- 
est curiosity ; for we well know, that, between the man 
and his knocker, there will inevitably be a greater or 
less degree of resemblance and sympathy. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 17 

" For instance, there is one description of knocker that 
used to be common enough, but which is fast passing 
away, — a large round one, with the jolly face of a con- 
vivial lion smiling blandly at you, as you twist the sides 
of your hair inio a curl, or pull up your shirt-collar 
while you are waiting for the door to be opened. We 
never sav/ that knocker on the door of a churlish man : 
so far as our experience is concerned, it invariably 
bespoke hospitality and another bottle. 

" No man ever saw this knocker on the door of 
a small attorney or bill-broker : they always patronize 
the other lion, — a heavy, ferocious-looking fellow, w^ith 
a countenance expressive of savage stupidity, — a sort 
of grand master among the knockers, and a great 
favorite with the selfish and brutal. 

" Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker, with 
a long, thin face, a pinched-up nose, and a very sharp 
chin : he is most in vogue with your government-office 
people ; in light drabs and starched cravats ; little, 
spare, priggish men, who are perfectly satisfied with 
their OAvn opinions, and consider themselves of para- 
mount importance. 

" We were greatly troubled, a few years ago, by the 
innovation of a new kind of knocker, without any face 
at all, composed of a wreath depending from a hand 
or small truncheon. A little trouble and attention, 
however, enabled us to overcome this difficulty, and to 
reconcile the new system to our favorite theory. You 



18 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

will invariably find this knocker on the doors of cold 
and formal people, who alwaj^s ask you why you dont 
come, and never say do. 

" Everybody knows the brass knocker is common to 
suburban villas and extensive boarding-schools ; and, 
having noticed this genus, we have recapitulated all 
the most prominent and strongly-defined species. 

" Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation of 
a man's brain by different passions produces correspond- 
ing developments in the form of his skull. Do not let 
us be understood as pushing our theory to the length 
of asserting that any alteration in a man's disposition 
would produce a visible effect on the feature of his 
knocker. Our position merely is, that, in such a case, 
the magnetism which must exist between a man and his 
knocker would induce the man to remove, and seek 
some knocker more congenial to his altered feelings. 
If you ever find a man changing his habitation without 
any reasonable pretext, depend upon it, that, although 
he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because 
he and his knocker are at variance. 

"Entertaining these feelings on tlie subject of knock- 
ers, it will be readily imagined with what consternation 
we viewed the entire removal of the knocker from the 
door of the next house to the one we lived in some time 
ago, and the substitution of a bell. This was a calamity 
we liad never anticipated. The bare idea of anybody 
being able to exist without a knocker appeared so wild 



CHARLES DICKENS. 19 

and visionary, that it had never for one instant entered 
our imagination. 

" We sauntered moodily from the spot, and bent out 
steps towards Eaton Square, then just building. What 
was our astonishment and indignation to find that bells 
were fast becoming^ the rule, and knockers the excep- 
tion ! Our theory trembled beneath the shock. We 
hastened home ; and fancying we foresaw, in the swift 
progTess of events, its entire abolition, resolved from 
that day forward to vent our speculations on our next- 
door neighbors in person. The house adjoining ours on 
the left hand was uninhabited, and we had, therefore, 
plenty of leisure to observe our next-door neighbors on 
the other side. 

'' The house without the knocker was in the occupa- 
tion of a city clerk ; and there was a neatly- written bill 
in the parlor window, intimating that lodgings for 
a single gentleman were to be let within. 

" It was a neat, dull little house, on the shady side 
of the way, with new, narrow floor-cloth in the passage, 
and new narrow stair-carpets up to the first floor. The 
paper Avas new, and the paint was new, and the furniture 
was new; and all three — paper, paint, and furniture 
— bespoke the limited means of the tenant. There was 
a little red-and-black carpet in the drawing-room, with 
a border of flooring all the way round ; a few stained 
chairs, and a Pembroke table. A pink shell was dis- 
played on each of the little sideboards ; which, with the 



20 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

addition of a tea-tray and caddy, a few more shells 
on the mantle-piece, and three peacock's feathers taste- 
fully arranged above them, completed the decorative 
furniture of the apartment. 

" Tin's was the room destined for the reception of tlie 
single gentleman during the day ; and a little back room 
on the same floor was assigned as his sleeping apartment 
by night. 

" The bill had not been long in the window, when 
a stout, good-humored-looking gentleman, of about five 
and thirty, appeared as a candidate for the tenancy. 
Terms were soon arranged, for the bill was taken down 
immediately after his first visit : in a day or two, the 
single gentleman came in, and shortly afterwards his 
real character came out. 

" First of all, he disj)layed a most extraordinary par- 
tiality for sitting up till three or four o'clock in the 
morning, drinking whiskey and water, and smoking 
cigars ; then he invited friends home, who used to come 
at ten o'clock, and begin to get happy about the small 
hours, when they evinced their perfect contentment by 
singing songs with half a dozen verses of two lines each, 
and a chorus of ten, which chorus used to be shouted 
forth by the whole strength of the company, in the 
most enthusiastic and vociferous manner, to the great 
annoyance of the neighbors, and the special discomfort 
of another single gentleman overhead. 

" Now, this was bad enough, occurring as it did three 



CHARLES DICKENS. 21 

times a week on the average. But this was not all ; 
when the company did go awa}^, instead of walking 
quietly down the street, as OAYjhodj else's company 
would have done, they amused themselves by making 
alarming and frightful noises, and counterfeiting the 
shrieks of females in distress. And, one night, a red-faced 
gentleman in a white hat knocked in a most urgent 
manner at the door of the powdered-headed old gentle- 
man at No. 3 ; and when the powdered-headed old gen- 
tleman, who thought one of his married daughters must 
have been taken ill prematurely, had groped down 
stairs, and, after a great deal of unbolting and key-turn- 
ing, opened the street-door, the red-faced man in the 
white hat said he hoped he'd excuse his giving him so 
much trouble, but he'd feel obliged if he'd favor him 
with a glass of cold spring water, and the loan of a shil- 
ling for a cab to take him home : on which the old gen- 
tleman slammed the door, and went up stairs, and threw 
the contents of his water-jug out of the window, — very 
straight, only it went over the wrong man, and the 
whole street was involved in confusion. 

" A joke's a joke ; and even practical jests are very 
capital in their way, if you can only get the other party 
to see the fun of them : but the population of our street 
were so dull of apprehension as to be quite lost to the 
drollery of this proceeding ; and the consequence was, 
that our next-door neighbor was obliged to tell the 
single gentleman, that, unless he gave up entertaining 



22 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

his friends at home, he really must be compelled to part 
with him. The single gentleman received the remon- 
strance with great good-humor, and promised, from that 
time forward, to spend his evenings at a coffee-house, — 
a determination which afforded general and unmixed 
satisfaction. -^ 

'' The next night passed off very well ; everybody 
was delighted with the change : but, on the next, the 
noises were renewed with greater spirit than ever. The 
single gentleman's friends, being unable to see him in his 
own house every alternate night, had come to the de- 
termination of seeing him home every night ; and what 
with the discordant greeting of the friends at parting, 
and the noise created by the single gentleman in Iris 
passage up stairs, and his subsequent struggles to get 
his boots off, the evil was not to be borne. So our next- 
door neighbor gave the single gentleman, who was a 
very good lodger in other respects, notice to quit ; and 
the single gentleman went away, and entertained his 
friends in other lodgings. 

" The next applicant for the va<;ant first floor was of 
a very different character from the troublesome single 
gentleman who had just quitted it. He was a tall, thin 
young gentleman, with a profusion of brown hair, red- 
dish whiskers, and very slightly developed mustachios. 
He wore a braided surtout, with frogs behind, light 
gray trousers, and wash-leather gloves, and had alto- 
gether rather a military appearance. So unlike the 



CHARLES DICKENS. 23 

roystering single gentleman ! Such insinuating man- 
ners, and such a delightful address ! So seriously dis- 
posed too ! When he first came to look at the lodgings, 
he inquired \nost particularly whether he was sure to be 
able to get a seat in the parish church ; and, when he 
had agreed to take them, he requested to have a list of 
the different local charities, as he intended to subscribe 
his mite to the most deserving among them. 

" Our next-door neighbor was perfectly happy. He 
had got a lodger at last of just his own way of think- 
ing, — a serious, well-disposed man, who abhorred 
gayety, and loved retirement. He took down the bill 
with a light heart, and pictured in imagination a long 
series of quiet Sundays, on which he and his lodger 
would exchange mutual civilities and Sunday papers. 

" The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to 
arrive fi'om the country next morning. He borrowed 
a clean shirt and a prayer-book from our next-door 
neighbor, and retired to rest at an early hour, requesting 
that he might be called punctually at ten o'clock next 
morning, — not before, as he was much fatigued. 

'' He was called, and did not answer : 'he was called 
again, but there was no reply. Our next-door neigh- 
bor became alarmed, and burst the door open. The se- 
rious man had left the house mysteriously, carrying with 
him the shirt, the prayer-book, a tea-spoon, and the bed- 
clothes. 

" Whether this occurrence, coupled with the irregu- 



24 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

larities of his former lodger, gave our next-door neigh- 
bor an aversion to single gentlemen, we know not : we 
only know that the next bill which made its appearance 
in the parlor window intimated, generally, that there 
were furnished apartments to let on the first floor. The 
bill was soon removed. The new lodgers at first at- 
tracted our curiosity, and afterwards excited our inter- 
est. 

" They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and 
his mother, a lady of about fifty, or it might be less. The 
mother wore a widow's weeds, and the boy was also 
clothed in deep mourning. They were poor, very 
poor; for their only means of support arose from the 
pittance the boy earned by copying writings, and trans- 
lating for the booksellers. 

" They had removed from some country place, and 
settled in London ; partly because it afforded better 
chances of employment for the boy, and partly, perhaps, 
with the natural desire to leave a place where they had 
been in better circumstances, and where their poverty 
was known. They were proud under their reverses, 
and above revealing their wants and privations to stran- 
gers. How bitter those privations were, and how hard 
the boy worked to remove them, no one ever knew but 
themselves. Night after night, two, three, four hours 
after midnight, could we hear the occasional raking of 
the scanty fire, or the hollow and half-stifled cough, 
which indicated his being still at work ; and day after 



CHARLES DICKENS. 25 

day could we see more plainly that Nature had set that 
unearthly light in his plaintive face which is the beacon 
of her worst disease. 

" Actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere 
curiosity, we contrived to establish first an acquaint- 
ance, and then a close intimacy, with the poor stran- 
gers. Our worst fears were realized, — tho boy was 
sinking fast. Through a part of the winter, and the 
whole of the following spring and summer, his labors 
were unceasingly prolonged ; and the mother attempted 
to procure needle-work, embroidery, — any thing for 
bread. 

" A few shillings, now and then, were all she could 
earn. The boy worked steadily on ; dying by minutes, 
but never once giving utterance to complaint or mur- 
mur. 

" It was a beautiful autumn evening when we went 
to pay our customary visit to the invalid. His little 
remaining strength had been decreasing rapidly for two 
or three days preceding ; and he was lying on the sofa 
at the open window, gazing at the setting sun. His 
mother had been reading the Bible to him ; for she 
closed the book as we entered, and advanced to meet us. 
^ I was telling William,' she said, ' that we must man- 
age to take him into the country somewhere, so that he 
may get well. He is not ill, you know ; but he is not 
very strong, and has exerted himself too much lately.* 
Poor thing ! The tears that streamed through her fin- 



26 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

gers, as she turned aside, as if to adjust her close widow's 
cap, too plainly showed how fruitless was the attempt 
to deceive herself. 

" The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his moth- 
er's arm with the other, drew her hastily towards him, 
and fervently kissed her cheek. There was a short 
pause. He sunk back upon his pillow, and looked with 
appalling earnestness in his mother's face. ' William, 
William ! ' said the terrified parent, ' don't look at me 
so — speak to me, dear ! ' The boy smiled languidly ; 
but an instant afterwards his features resolved into the 
same cold, solemn gaze. 

" ' William, dear William ! ' said the distracted moth- 
er, ' rouse yourself, dear : don't look at me so, love, — 
pray don't ! O my God ! what shall I do ! — my dear, 
dear boy ! — he is dying ! ' 

" The boy raised himself by a violent effort, and folded 
his hands together : ' Mother ! dear, dear mother ! 
bury me in the open fields, anywhere but in these 
dreadful streets. I should like to be where you can see 
my grave, mother, but not in these close, crowded 
streets : they have killed me. Kiss me again, mother ; 
put your arm round my neck ' — 

" He fell back : a strange expression stole upon his 
features ; not of pain or suffering, but an indescribable 
fixing of every line and muscle, — the boy was dead." 

The following sketch, from the same early writings 



CHARLES DICKENS. 27 

of Mr. Dickens, cannot surely be open to the charge of 
favoring intemperance. It is a sad comment on the un- 
bridled appetite of the drunkard. It warns the mod- 
erate drinker to beware of that which " biteth like a 
serpent and stingeth like an adder." 

^^THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. 

"We will be bold to say, that there is scarcely a 
man in the constant habit of walking, day after day, 
through any of the crowded thoroughfares of London, 
who cannot recollect, among the people whom he ' knows 
by sight,' to use a familiar phrase, some being, of abject 
and wretched appearance, whom he remembers to have 
seen in a very different condition, whom he has observed 
sinking lower and lower by almost imperceptible de- 
grees, and the shabbiness and utter destitution of whose 
appearance at last strike forcibly and painfully upon 
him as he passes by. Is there any man who has mixed 
much with society, or whose avocations have caused 
him to mingle, at one time or other, with a great num- 
ber of people, who cannot call to mind the time when 
some shabby, miserable wretch, in rags and filth, who 
shuffles past him now in all the squalor of disease and 
poverty, was a respectable tradesman, or a clerk, or 
a man following some thriving pursuit, with good pros- 
pects and decent means ; or cannot any of our readers 
call to mind, from among the list of their quondam ac- 
quaintance, some fallen and degraded man, who lingers 



28 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

about the pavement in hungry misery : from whom 
every one turns coldly away, and who preserves him- 
self fi'om sheer starvation, nobody knows how ? Alas ! 
such cases are of too frequent occurrence to be rare 
items in any man's experience ; and they arise from one 
cause, — drunkenness, that fierce rage for the slow, sure 
poison, that oversteps every other consideration; that 
casts aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and sta- 
tion, and hurries its victims madly on to degradation 
and death. 

" Some of these men have been impelled by misfor- 
tune and misery to the vice that has degraded them. 
The ruin of worldly expectations, the death of those 
they loved, the sorrow that slowly consumes but will 
not break the heart, has driven them wild ; and they 
present the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying 
by their own hands. But by far the greater part have 
wilfully, and with open eyes, plunged into the gulf from 
which the man who once enters it never rises more, but 
into which he sinks deeper and deeper down, until re- 
covery is hopeless. 

" Such a man as this once stood by the bedside of his 
dying wife, while his children knelt around, and mingled 
low bursts of giief with their innocent prayers. The 
room was scantily and meanly furnished ; and it needed 
but a glance at the pale form from which the light of 
life was fast passing away, to know that grief and want 
and anxious care had been busy at the heart for many 



CHARLES DICKENS. 29 

a weary year. An elderly female, with her face bathed 
in tears, was supporting the head of the dying woman 
— her daughter — on her arm. But it was not towards 
her that the wan face turned : it was not her hand 
that the cold and trembling fingers clasped. They 
pressed the husband's arm : the eyes so soon to be 
closed in death rested on his face ; and the man shook 
beneath their gaze. His dress was slovenly and disor- 
dered, his face inflamed, his eyes bloodshot and heavy. 
He had been summoned from some wil^ debauch to the 
bed of sorrow and death. 

'' A shaded lamp by the bedside cast a dim light on 
the figures around, and left the remainder of the room 
in thick, deep shadow. The silence of night prevailed 
without the house, and the stillness of death was in the 
chamber. A watch hung over the mantle-shelf. Its low 
ticking was the only sound that broke the profound 
quiet : but it was a solemn one ; for well they knew, 
who heard it, that before it had recorded the passing of 
another hour, it would beat the knell of a departed 
spirit. 

"It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the 
approach of death ; to know that hope is gone, and 
recovery impossible ; and to sit and count the dreary 
hours through long, long nights, — such nights as only 
watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the 
blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the pent- 
up, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth by the 



30 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

unconscious, "helpless being before you; and to think 
how little the reserve and cunning of a whole life will 
avail when fever and delirium tear off the mask at last. 
Strange tales have been told in the wanderings of dying 
men, — tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who 
stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and 
affright, lest they should be scared to madness by what 
they heard and saw ; and many a wretch has died alone, 
raving of deeds, the very name of which has driven the 
boldest man away. 

" But no such ravings were to be heard at the bed- 
side by which the children knelt. Their half-stifled 
sobs and meanings alone broke the silence of the lonely 
chamber. And when at last the mother's grasp re- 
laxed ; and, turning one look from the children to their 
father, she vainly strove to speak, and fell backward on 
the pillow, all was so calm and tranquil, that she seemed 
to sink to sleep. They leant over her : they called upon 
her name, softly at first, and then in the loud and 
piercing tones of desperation ; but there was no reply. 
They listened for her breath, but no sound came. They 
felt for the palpitation of the heart, but no faint throb 
responded to the touch. That heart was broken, and 
she was dead. 

" The husband sunk into a chair by the bedside, and 
clasped his hands upon his burning forehead. He gazed 
from child to child ; but, when a weeping eye met his, he 
quailed beneath its look. No word of comfort was 



CHARLES DICKENS. 31 

whispered in his ear, no look of kindness lighted on 
his face. All shrunk from and avoided him ; and when, 
at last, he staggered from the room, no one sought to 
follow or console the widower. 

" The time had been when many a friend would have 
_ crowded round him in his affliction, and many a heart- 
felt condolence Avould have met him in his grief. 
Where were they now ? One by one, friends, relations, 
the commonest acquaintance even, had fallen off from 
and deserted the drunkard. His wife alone had clung 
to him in good and evil, in sickness and poverty ; and 
how had he rewarded her? He had reeled from the 
tavern to her bedside in time to see her die. 

" He rushed from the house, and .walked swiftly 
through the streets. Remorse, fear, shame, all crowded 
on his mind. Stupefied w^itli drink, and bewildered 
with the scene he had just witnessed, he re-entered the 
tavern he had quitted shortly before. Glass succeeded 
glass. His blood mounted, and his brain whirled round. 
Death ! Every one must die, and why not she ? She 
was too good for him : her relations had often told him 
so. Curses on them ! Had they not deserted her, and 
left her to whine away the time at home ? AVell, she 
was dead, and happy perhaps. It was better as it was. 
Another glass, — one more 1 Hurrah ! It was a merry 
Hfe while it lasted; and he would make the most of it. 

" Time went on. The three children who were left to 
him grew up, and were children no longer : the father 



32 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

remained the same, — poorer, shabbier, and more disso- 
lute-looking, but the same confirmed and irreclaimable 
drunkard. The boys had, long ago, run wild in the 
streets, and left him. The girl alone remained; but she 
worked hard, and words or blows could always procure 
him something for the tavern. So he went on in the 
old course, and a merry life he led. 

" One night, as early as ten o'clock, — for the girl had 
been sick for many days, and there was, consequently, 
little to spend at the public house, — he bent his steps 
homewards, bethinking himself, that, if he would have 
her able to earn money, it would be as well to apply to 
the parish surgeon, or, at all events, to take the trouble 
of inquiring what ailed her, which he had not yet 
thought it worth while to do. It was a wet December 
night : the wind blew piercing cold, and the rain poured 
heavily down. He begged a few half-pence from a 
passer-by ; and, having bought a small loaf (for it was 
his interest to keep the girl alive if he could), he 
shuffled onwards as fast as the wind and rain would 
let him. At the back of Fleet Street, and lying between 
it and the water-side, are several mean and narrow 
courts, which form a portion of Whitefriars; and it 
was to one of these that he directed his steps. 

" The alley into which he turned might, for filth and 
misery, have competed with the darkest corner of this 
ancient sanctuary in its dirtiest and most lawless time. 
The houses, varying from two stories in height to four, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 33 

were stained with every indescribable hue that long 
exposure to the weather, damp, and rottenness, can 
impart to tenements composed originally of the roughest 
and coarsest materials. The windows were patched 
with paper, and stuffed with the foulest rags ; the 
doors were falling from their hinges ; poles, with lines 
on which to dry clothes, projected from every casement ; 
and sounds of quarrelling or drunkenness issued from 
every room. 

" The solitary oil-lamp in the centre of the court had 
been bloAvn out, either by the violence of the wind, or 
the act of some inhabitant who had excellent reasons 
for Dbjecting to his residence being rendered too con- 
spicuous ; and the only light which fell upon the broken 
and uneven pavement was derived from the miserable 
candles that here and there twinkled in the rooms of 
such of the more fortunate residents as could afford to 
indulge in so expensive a luxury. A gutter ran down 
the centre of the alley, all the sluggish odors of which 
had been called forth by the rain ; and, as the wind 
whistled through the old houses, the doors and shutters 
creaked upon their hinges, and the windows shook in 
their frames with a violence which every moment 
seemed to threaten the destruction of the whole place. 

" The man whom we have followed into this den 
walked on in the darkness ; sometimes stumbling into 
the main gutter, and at others into some branch reposi- 
tories of garbage which had been formed by the rain, 



34 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

until he reached the last house in the court. The door, 
or rather what was left of it, stood ajar for the con- 
venience of the numerous lodgers ; and he proceeded 
to grope his way np the old and broken stair, to the 
attic story. 

" He was within a step or two of his room-door, when 
it opened ; and a girl, whose miserable and emaciated 
appearance was only to be equalled by that (5f the 
candle which she shaded with her hand, peeped anx- 
iously out. 

'"Is that you, father? ' said the girl. 

" ' Who else should it be ? ' replied the man gruffly. 
' What are you trembling at ? It's little enough that I 
have had to drink to-day ; for there's no drink without 
mone}', and no money without work. What the d — ^I's 
the matter with the girl ? ' 

" ' I am not well, father — not at all well,' said the 
girl, bursting into tears. 

" ' Ah ! ' replied the man, in the tone of a person who 
is compelled to admit a very unpleasant fact, to which 
he would rather remain blind if he could. ' You must 
get better somehow, for we must have money. You 
must go to the parish doctor, and make him give you 
some medicine. They're paid for it, d — n 'em. What 
are you standing before the door for ? Let me come in, 
can't you ? ' 

" ' Father,' whispered the girl, shutting the door be- 
hind her, and placing herself before it, ' WilHam has 
come back.' 



CHARLES DICKENS. 35 

" ' Who ? ' said the man, with a start. 

" ' Hush ! ' replied the girl : ' William, Brother Wil- 
liam.' 

" ' And what does he want ? ' said the man, with an 
effort at composure, — 'money? meat? drink? He's 
come to the wrong shop for that, if he does. Give me 
the candle ; give me the candle, fool : I ain't going to 
hurt him.' He snatched the candle from her hand, and 
walked into the room. 

Sitting on an old box, with his head resting on his 
hand, and his eyes fixed on a wretched cinder-fire that 
was smouldering on the hearth, was a young man of 
about two and twenty, miserably clad in an old coarse 
jacket and trousers. He started up when his father 
entered. 

" ' Fasten the door, Mary,' said the young man hastily, 
— 'fasten the door. You look as if you didn't know 
me, father. It's long enough since you drove me from 
home : you may well forget me.' 

" ' And what do you want here now ? ' said the father, 
seating himself on a stool, on the other side of the fire- 
place. ' What do you want here now ? ' 

" ' Shelter,' replied the son : ' I'm in trouble ; that's 
enough. If I'm caught I shall swing; that's certain. 
Caught I shall be, unless I stop here ; that's as certain. 
And there's an end of it.' 

"• ' You mean to say you ve been robbing or murder- 
ing, then ? ' said the father. 



36 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" Yes, I do,' replied the son. ' Does it surprise you, 
father? ' He looked steadily in the man's face ; but he 
withdrew his eyes, and bent them on the ground. 

" ' Where's your brothers ? ' he said, after a long 
pause. 

" ' Where they'll never trouble you,' replied the son : 
' John's gone to America, and Henry's dead.' 

" ' Dead ! ' said the father, with a shudder which even 
he could not repress. 

" ' Dead,' replied the young man. ' He died in my 
arms, — shot like a dog, by a gamekeeper. He staggered 
back : I caught him, and his blood trickled down my 
hands. It poured out from his side like water. He was 
weak, and it blinded him ; but he threw himself down 
on his knees, on the grass, and prayed to God, that, if 
his mother was in heaven, he would hear her prayers for 
pardon for her youngest son. " I was her favorite boy. 
Will," he said ; " and I am glad to think now, that when 
she was dying, though I was a very young child then, 
and my little heart was almost bursting, I knelt down at 
the foot of the bed, and thanked God for having made 
me so fond of her as to have never once done any thing 
to bring the tears into her eyes. O Will ! why was 
she taken away, and father left?" There's his dying 
words, father,' said the young man: 'make the best 
you can of 'em. You struck him across the face, in a 
drunken fit, the morning we ran away ; and here's the 
end of it 



CHARLES DICKENS. 37 

" The girl wept aloud ; and the father, sinking hi? 
head upon his knees, rocked himself to and fro. 

'' ' If I am taken,' said the young man, ' I shall be 
carried back into the country, and hung for that man's 
murder. They cannot trace me here, without your 
assistance, father. For aught I know, yoi* may give m 
up to justice ; but, unless you do, here I stop until I cai: 
venture to escape abroad.' 

" For two whole days, all three remained in the 
wretched room, without stirring out. On the third 
evening, however, the girl was worse than she had been 
yet, and the few scraps of food they had were gone. It 
was indispensably necessary that somebody should go 
out ; and, as the girl Avas too weak and ill, the father 
went, just at night-fall. 

" He got some medicine for the girl, and a trifle in the 
way of pecuniary assistance. On his way back, he 
earned sixpence by holding a horse ; and he turned 
homewards with enough money to supply their most 
pressing wants for two or three days to come. He had 
to pass the public-house. He lingered for an instant, 
walked past it, turned back again, lingered dnce more, 
and finally slunk in. Two men whom he had not ob- 
served were on the watch. They were on the point of 
giving up their search in despair, when his loitering 
attracted their attention ; and, when he entered the pub- 
lic-house, they followed him. 

'' ' You'll drink with me, master,' said one of them, 
proffering him a glass of liquor. 



38 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" • And me too,' said the other, replenishing the glass 
as soon as it was drained of its contents. 

'* The man thought of his hungry children, and his 
son's danger. But they were nothing to the drunkard. 
He did drink ; and his reason left him. 

'•• ' A wet night. Warden,' whispered one of the men 
in his ear, as he at length turned to go away, after 
spending in liquor one-half of the money on which, per- 
haps, his daughter's life depended. 

" ' The right sort of night for our friends in hiding, 
Master Warden,' whispered the other. 

" ' Sit down here,' said the one who had spoken first, 
drawing him into a corner. ' We have been looking 
arter the young 'un. We came to tell him it's all right 
now ; but we couldn't find him, 'cause we hadn't got 
the precise direction. But that ain't strange ; for I don't 
think he Imow'd it himself when he came to London, 
did he ? ' 

'' ' No, he didn't,' replied the father. 

" The two men exchanged glances. 

" ' There's a vessel down at the docks, to sail at mid- 
night, when it's high water,' resumed the first speaker; 
' and we'll put him on board. His passage is taken in 
another name ; and, what's better than that, it's paid for. 
It's lucky we met you.' 

u 4 Very,' said the second. 

'' * Capital luck,' said the first, with a wink to his com- 
panion. 



CIJARLES DICKENS. 39 

" ' Great,' replied the second, with a slight nod of in- 
telligence. 

" ' Another glass here ; quick,' said the first speaker. 
And, in five minutes more, the father had unconsciously 
yielded up his own son into the hangman's hands. 

" Slowly and heavily the time dragged along, as the 
brother and sister, in their miserable hiding-place, listened 
in anxious suspense to the slightest sound. At length, 
a heavy footstep was heard upon the stair ; it approached 
nearer ; it reached the landing ; and the father staggered 
into the room. 

" The girl saw that he was intoxicated, and advanced 
with the candle in her hand to meet him : she stopped 
short, gave a loud scream, and fell senseless on the 
ground. She had caught sight of the shadow of a man, 
reflected on the floor. They both rushed in ; and in 
another instant the young man was a prisoner, and 
handcuffed. 

" ' Very quietly done,' said one of the men to his 
companion, ' thanks to the old man. Lift up the girl, 
Tom. Come, come, it's no use crying, young woman. 
It's all over now, and can't be helped.' 

" The young man stooped for an instant over the girl, 
and then turned fiercely round upon his father, who had 
reeled against the wall, and was gazing on the group 
with drunken stupidity. 

" ' Listen to me, father,' he said, in a tone that made 
the drunkard's flesh creep. 'My brother's blood, and 



40 LIFE AND WRIMNGS OF 

mine, is on your head : I never had kind look or word, 
or care, from you ; and, alive or dead, I never will for- 
give you. Die when you will, or how, I will be with 
you. I speak as a dead man now ; and I warn you, fath- 
er, that as surely as you must one day stand before your 
]\Iaker, so surelj^ shall your children be there, hand in 
hand, to cry for judgment against you.' He raised his 
manacled hands in a threatening attitude, fixed his eyes 
on his shrinking parent, and slowly left the room ; and 
neither father nor sister ever beheld him more, on this 
side the grave. 

" When the dim and misty light of a winter's morning 
penetrated into the narrow court, and struggled through 
the begrimed window of the wretched room. Warden 
awoke from his heavy sleep, and found himself alone. 
He rose, and looked round him. The old flock mattress 
on the floor was undisturbed : every thing was just as he 
remembered to have seen it last ; and there were no signs 
of any one, save himself, having occupied the room during 
the night. He inquired of the other lodgers, and of the 
neighbors ; but his daughter had not been seen or heard 
of. He rambled through the streets, and scrutinized 
each wretched face among the crowds that thronged 
them with anxious eyes. But his search was fruitless ; 
and he returned to his garret when night came on, des- 
olate and weary. 

*' For many days, he occupied himself in the same 
manner ; but no trace of his daughter did he meet with, 



CHAKLES DICKENS. 41 

and no word of her reached his ears. At length, he gave 
up the pursuit as hopeless. He had long thought of the 
probabiHty of her leaving him, and endeavoring to gain 
her bread in quiet elsewhere. She had left him, at last, 
to starve alone. He ground his teeth, and cursed her. 

" He begged his bread from door to door. Every 
halfpenny he could wring from the pity or credulity of 
those to whom he addressed himself was spent in the 
old wa}^ A year passed over his head : the roof of a 
jail was the only one that had sheltered him for many 
months. He slept under archways and in brick-fields, 

— anywhere where there was some warmth or shelter 
from the cold and rain. But, in the last stage of pover- 
ty, disease, and houseless want, he was a drunkard still. 

" At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a door- 
step in Piccadilly, faint and ill. The premature decay 
of vice and profligacy had worn him to the bone. His 
cheeks were hollow and livid ; his eyes were sunken, and 
their sight was dim. His legs trembled beneath his 
weight, and a cold shiver ran through every limb. 

" And now the long-forgotten scenes of a misspent life 
crowded thick and fast upon him. He thought of the 
time when he had had a home, — a happy, cheerful home 

— and of those who peopled it, and flocked about him 
then, until the forms of his elder children seemed to 
rise from the grave and stand about him, — so plain, so 
clear, and so distinct they were, that he could touch 
and feel them. Looks that he had long forgotten were 



42 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

fixed upon him once more ; voices long since hushed in 
death sounded in his ears like the music of village-bells. 
But it was only for an instant. The rain beat heavil}^ 
upon him ; and cold and hunger were gnawing at his 
heart again. 

" He rose, and dragged his feeble limbs a few paces 
farther. The street was silent and empty ; the few pas- 
sengers who passed by at that late hour hurried quickly 
on, and his tremulous voice was lost in the violence of 
the storm. Again that heavy chill struck through his 
frame; and his blood seemed to stagnate beneath it. 
He coiled himself up in a projecting doorway, and tried 
to sleep. 

" But sleep had fled from his dull and glazed eyes. 
His mind wandered strangely, but he was awake and con- 
scious. The well-known shout of drunken mirth sound- 
ed in his ear, the glass was at nis lips, the board was cov- 
ered with choice, rich food. They were before him : he 
could see them all ; he had but to reach out his hand, 
and take them ; and, though the illusion was reality 
itself, he knew that he was sitting alone in the deserted 
street, watching the rain-drops as they j)attered on the 
stones ; that death Avas coming upon him by inches ; and 
that there were none to care for or help him. 

'' Suddenly he startevd up, in the extremity of terror. 
Ho had heard his own voice shoutins^ in the niorht air, 
he knew not what, or wiiy. Hark ! A groan ! An- 
other ! His senses were leaving him : half-formed and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 43 

incoherent words burst from his hps, and his hands 
sought to tear and lacerate his flesh. He was going 
mad, and he shrieked for help till his voice failed him. 

'' He raised his head, and looked up the long, dismal 
street. He recollected that outcasts like himself, con- 
demned to wander da}^ and night in those dreadful 
streets, had sometimes gone distracted with their own 
loneliness. He remembered to have heard, many years 
before, that a homeless wretch had once been found in 
a solitary corner, sharpening a rusty knife to plunge 
into his own heart, preferring death to that endless, 
weary wandering to and fro. In an instant, his resolve 
was taken. His limbs received new life : he ran quickly 
from the spot, and paused not for breath until he 
reached the river-side. 

" He crept softly down the steep stone stairs that 
lead from the commencement of Waterloo Bridg^e down 
to the water's level. He crouched into a corner, and 
held his breath, as the patrol passed. Never did prison- 
er's heart throb with the hope of liberty and life half so 
eagerly as did that of the wretched man at the prospect 
of death. The watch passed close to him, but he re- 
mained unobserved; and, after waiting till the sound of 
footsteps had died away in the distance, he cautiouslj^ 
descended, and stood beneath the gloomy arch that 
forms the landing-place from the river. 

'' The tide was in, and the Avater flowed at his feet. 
The rain had ceased, the wind was lulled, and all was, 



44 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

for the moment, still and quiet, — so quiet that the 
slightest sound on the opposite bank, even the rippling 
of the water against the barges that were moored there, 
was distinctly audible to his ear. The stream stole lan- 
guidly and sluggishly on. Strange and fantastic forms 
rose to the surface, and beckoned him to approach ; dark, 
gleaming eyes peered from the water, and seemed to 
mock his hesitation, while hollow murmurs from behind 
urged him onwards. He retreated a few paces, took a 
short run, a desperate leap, and plunged into the river. 

" Not five seconds had passed when he rose to the 
water's surface ; but what a change had taken place, in 
that short time, in all his thoughts and feelings ! Life, 
life, in any form, — poverty, misery, starvation, any thing 
but death. He fought and struggled with the water 
that closed over his head, and screamed in agonies of ter- 
ror. The curse of his own son rang in his ears. The 
shore, but one foot of dry ground, — he could almost 
touch the step. One hand's-breadth nearer, and he was 
saved; but the tide bore him onward, under the dark 
arches of the bridge, and he sank to the bottom. 

" Again he rose, and struggled for life. For one in- 
stant, — for one brief instant, — the buildings on the riv- 
er's banks, the lights on the bridge through which the 
current had borne him, the black water, and the fast fly- 
ing clouds, were distinctly visible. Once more he sunk, 
and once again he rose. Bright flames of fire shot up 
from earth to heaven, and reeled before his eyes, while 



CHARLES DICKENS. 45 

the water thundered in his ears, and .stunned him with 
its furious roar. 

"A week afterwards, the body was washed ashore, 
^ome miles down the river, a swollen and disfigured 
mass. Unrecognized and unpitied, it was borne to the 
grave ; and there it has long since mouldered away." 



CHAPTER III. 



CLIMBING THE LADDER. 



Willis's Description of Dickens. —His Inimitable Humor. —Emerson's Criticism.— 
Hugh Miller's Opinion. — London Review. —Pickwick Papers. — Sam Weller's 
Valentine. — The Ivy Green. — Death in the Prison. 

" O spirits gay, and kindly heart 1 
Precious the blessings ye impart I " 

Joanna Baillie. 
" A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." — Prov, xvii. 22. 

ILIGENCE gains its reward. Charles 
Dickens was not weary in effort, and he 
believed in climbing the ladder round by 
round. So he was faithful as a reporter 
till he found himself able to fill a different, 
and, as far as regards fame and pecuniary reward, an 
advanced position. Of those reportorial days, our own 
N. P. Willis wrote once, and described his first meeting 
with Charles Dickens. He states that he was invited by 
the publisher, Macrone, to visit Newgate ; and proceeds 
to say : — 

'' I willingly agreed, never having seen this fLiraous 
prison ; and, after I was seated in the cab, he said that 

46 




CHARLES DICKENS. 47 

he was to pick up a young paragraphist for *' The Morn- 
ing Chronicle," who wished to write a description of it. 
In the most crowded part of Holborn, within a door 
or two of the Bull and Mouth Inn (the great starting 
and stopping place of the stage-coaches), we pulled up 
at the entrance of a large building used for lawj^ers' 
chambers. Not to leave me sitting in the rain, Macrone 
asked nue to dismount with him. I followed by a long 
flight of stairs to an upper story, and was ushered into 
an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with a deal ta- 
ble, two or tliree chairs, a few books, a small boy, and 
Mr. Dickens,. for the contents. I was only struck at first 
with one thing (and I made a memorandum of it that 
evening, as the strongest instance I had ever seen of 
English obsequiorusness to employers), — the degree to 
which the poor author was overpowered with the honor 
of his publisher's visit ! I remember saying to myself, 
as I sat down on a rickety chair, ' My good fellow, if 
you were in America, with that fine face and your ready 
quill, you would have no need to be condescended to 
b}^ a publisher.' Dickens was dressed very much as he 
has since described Dick Swiveller, minus the swell 
look. His hair was cropped close to his head, his 
clothes scant, though jauntily cut ; and, after changing 
a ragged office-coat for a shabby blue, he stood by the 
door, collarless and buttoned up, the very personifica- 
tion, I thought, of a close sailer to the wind. We went 
down, and crowded into the cab (one passenger more 



48 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

than the law allowed) ; and, Dickens partly in my lap 
partly in Macrone's, we drove on to Newgate. In his 
works, if you remember, there is a description of the 
prison, drawn from this day's observation. We were 
there an hour or two, and were shown some of the cele- 
brated murderers, confined for life, and one young sol- 
dier waiting for execution ; and, in one of the passages, 
we chanced to meet Mrs. Fry on her usual errand of 
benevolence. Though interested in Dickens's face, I 
forgot him, naturally enough, after we entered the pris- 
on ; and I do not think I heard him speak during the two 
hours. I parted from him at the door of the prison, and 
continued my stroll into the city. Not long after this, 
Macrone sent me the sheets of ' Sketches by Boz,' with 
a note saying that they were by th^ gentleman who 
went with us to Newgate. I read the book with amaze- 
ment at the genius displayed in it, and, in my note of 
reply, assured Macrone that I thought his fortune was 
made as a publisher if he could monopolize the author. 

" Two or three years afterwards, I was in London, 
and was present at the complimentary dinner given to 
Macready. Samuel Lover, who sat next me, pointed out 
Dickens. I looked up and down the table, but was whol- 
ly unable to single him out, without getting my friend to 
number the people who sat above him. He was no more 
like the same man I had seen than a tree in June is like 
the same tree in February. He sat leaning his head on 
his hand while Bulwer was speaking ; and, with his very 



CHARLES DICKENS. 49 

long hair, his very flashy waistcoat, his chains and rings, 
and withal a paler face than of old, he was totally un- 
recognizable. The comparison was very interesting to 
me, and I looked at him a long time. He was then 
in the culmination of popularity, and seemed jaded to 
stupefaction. 

" Remembering the glorious works he had written 
since I had seen liim, I longed to pay him my homage, 
but had no opportunity ; and I did not see him again till 
he came over to reap his harvest and upset his hay-cart 
in America. When all the ephemera of his impru- 
dences and improvidences shall have passed away, — 
say twenty years hence, — I should like to see liim 
again, renowned as he will be for the most original and 
remarkable works of his time." Willis referred to his 
first visit to America, which Dickens, signalized by the 
publication of those "Notes" which were so unaccept- 
able. When the great novehst again trod the Amer- 
ican shore, the poet who thus wrote of him had gone to 
the spirit-land. 

It has been difficult sometimes to decide in regard to 
the humor of Dickens, whether it was the chief char- 
acteristic of his writings, or whether it was exceeded 
by his pathos : most readers seem to consider them 
about equal. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks of Dickens as a writer 
" with preternatural apprehension of the language of 
manners and the varieties of street-life, with pathos 

4 



50 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

and laughter, with patriotic and still enlarging gener- 
osity." He calls him " a painter of English details, like 
Hogarth ; local and temporary in his tints and style, 
and local in his aims." But, notv/ithstanding this crit- 
icism, Emerson enjoyed Dickens, and the reading world 
accepted him as a novelist. 

Hugh Miller classed Dickens with great writers, but 
at the lower end of a descending scale. The great geol- 
ogist went to view the place where Shakspeare was 
born, and there found a set of albums, in which visitors 
placed their names. Among those presented to his no- 
tice were, first that of Walter Scott, and then that of 
Charles Dickens. Mr. Miller wrote of the matter : "It 
is a curious coincidence, — Shakspeare^ Scott^ Dickens I 
The scale is a descending one ; so is the scale from the 
lion to the leopard, and from the leopard to the tiger-cat : 
but cat, leopard, and lion belong to one great family ; 
and these three poets belong unequivocally to one great 
family also. They are generically one ; masters, each in 
his own sphere, not simply of the art of exhibiting char- 
acter in the truth of nature, — for that a Hume or a 
Tacitus may possess, — but of the rarer and more diffi- 
cult dramatic art of making characters exhibit them- 
selves. It is not uninstructive to remark how the 
peculiar ability of portraying character in this form is 
so exactly proportioned to the general intellectual power 
of the writer who possesses it. . . . Viewed with ref- 
erence to this simple rule, the higher characters of 



CHAELES DICKENS. 51 

Scott, Dickens, and Sliakspeare curiously indicate the 
intellectual status of the men who produced them. . . . 
The higher characters of Dickens do not stand by any 
means so high [as Scott's] ; the fluid in the original 
tube rests at a lower level ; and no one seems better 
aware of the fact than Dickens himself. He knows 
liis proper walk ; and, content with expatiating in a 
comparatively humble province of human life and char- 
acter, rarely stands on tiptoe, in the vain attempt to 
portray an intellect taller than his own. . . . Dickens, 
ere he became the most popular of living English au- 
thors, must have been a first-class reporter ; and the 
faculty that made him so is the same which now leads 
us to speak of him in the same breath with Sliakspeare. 
... In this age of books, I marvel no bookseller has 
ever thought of presenting the public with the Bow- 
street reports of Dickens. They would form, assuredly, 
a curious work, — not less so, though on a different 
principle, than the Parliamentary reports of Dr. Samuel 
Johnson." 

Undoubtedly Dickens wrought into his next book 
some of his experiences and observations while a re- 
porter ; and he gave the delighted public amother vol- 
ume, called " The Pickwick Papers." It is said that 
the freshness and humor of the " Sketches by Boz," 
and the dramatic power indicated by the " Village 
Coquettes," a comic opera which Mr. Dickens wrote 
about the same time, attracted the attention of Messrs. 



52 LIFE AND WETTINGS OF 

Chapman and Hall, the publishers, who applied to 
" Boz " for a serial story to be issued in monthly parts. 
The result was the " Posthumous Memoirs of the Pick- 
wick Club," with illustrations at first from the pencil of 
Seymour, and, after he committed suicide, illustrations 
from Hablot K. Browne, — "• Phiz." 

" The success of the ' Pickwick Papers ' was imme- 
diate and great. Its wit, pathos, and shrewd picturing 
of English character, high and low, touched. the heart 
and fancy of all classes. The sayings of Sam Weller 
were quoted by speakers in the House of Parliament 
and the ragged gamins in the slums of London." 

" The London Quarterly Review," in October, 1837, 
said of Mr. Dickens, " The popularity of this writer is 
one of the most remarkable literary phenomena of recent 
times ; for it has been fairly earned, without resorting 
to any of the means by which most other writers have 
succeeded in attracting the attention of their contem- 
poraries. He has flattered no popular prejudice, and 
profited by no passing folly ; he has attempted no cari- 
cature of the manners or conversation of the aristocracy ; 
and there are very few political or personal allusions in 
his works. ' Moreover, his class of subjects is such as to 
expose him, at the outset, to the fatal objection of vul- 
garity ; and, with the exception of occasional extracts 
in the newspapers, he received little or no assistance 
from the press. And yet, in less than six months from 
the appearance of the first number of the ' Pickwick 



CHARLES DICKENS. 53 

Papers,' the whole reading public was talking about 
them : the names of Winkle, Warclle, Weller, Snocl- 
grass, Dodson, and Fogg, had become familiar in our 
mouths as household terms ; and Mr. Dickens was the 
grand object of interest to the whole tribe of ' Leo- 
hunters,' male and female, of the metropolis. Nay, 
Pickwick chintzes figured in linen-drapers' windows, 
aiid Weller corduroys in breeches-makers' advertise- 
ments ; Boz cabs might be seen rattling through the 
streets ; and the portrait of the author of ' Pelham ' or 
' Crichton ' was scraped down or pasted over, to make 
room for that of the new popular favorite, in the omni- 
buses. This is only to be accounted for on the suppo- 
sition that a fresh vein of humor had been opened, that 
a new and decidedly original genius had sprung up ; and 
the most cursory reference to preceding English writers 
of the comic order will show, that, in his own peculiar 
walk, JMr. Dickens is not simply the most distinguished, 
but the first." 

Mr. Dickens was but about twenty-three when he 
was asked to write "Pickwick; " and of that invitation 
he thus speaks in a later preface to that humorous vol- 

lune : — 

/ 
/ » 

A 

/ " When I opened my door in Furnival's Inn to the 
partner who represented the firm, I recognized in him 
the person from whose hands I had bought, two or three 
years previously, and whom I had never seen before or 



54 , LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

since, my first copy of the magazine in wliich my first 
effusion — a paper in the ' Sketches,' called ' Mk. Minns 
AND HIS Cousin,' dropped stealthily one evening at 
twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter-box, 
in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street — ap- 
peared in all the glory of print ; on which occasion I 
walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it 
for half-an-hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with 
joy and pride that they could not bear the street, and 
were not fit to be seen there. I told my visitor of the 
coincidence, which we both hailed as a good omen, and 
so fell to business." 

The high moral purpose of the " Pickwick Papers " 
can be seen by these words from the same preface : — 

" Who knows, but, by the time the series reaches its 
conclusion, it may be discovered that there are even 
magistrates in town and country who should be taught 
to shake hands every day with Common-sense and Jus- 
tice ; that even poor-laws may have mercy on the weak, 
the aged, and unfortunate ; that schools, on the broad 
principles of Christianity, are the best adornment for 
the length and breadth of this civilized land ; that 
prison-doors should be barred on the tbutside no less 
heavily and carefully than they are barred within ; that 
the universal diffusion of common means of decency 
and health is as much the right of the poorest of the 
poor as it is indispensable to the safety of the rich and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 55 

of the State ; that a few petty boards and bodies — less 
than droj)S in the great ocean of humanity whfbh roars 
around them — are not forever to let loose fever and 
consumption on God's creatures at their will, or always 
to keep their jobbing little fiddles going, for a Dance of 
Death." 

In " Pickwick Papers " may be found the following 
song, which was exceeding!}' popular in its day, entitled 

" THE IVY GREEN. 

" Oh, a dainty plant is the ivy green, 
That creepeth o'er ruins old ! 
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, 

Li his cell so lone and cold. 
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed. 

To pleasure his dainty whim ; 
And the mouldering dust that years have made 
Is a merry meal for him. 

Creeping where no life is seen, 
A rare old plant is the ivy green. 

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wino-s ; 

And a staunch old heart has he. 
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings, 

To his friend the huge oak-tree ! 
And slyly he traileth along the ground, 

And his leaves he gently waves. 
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round 
The rich mould of dead men's graves. 

Creeping where grim death has been, 
A rare old plant is the ivy green. 



56 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed, 
« And nations have scattered been ; 
But the stout old ivy shall never fade 

From its hale and hearty green. 
The brave old plant in its lonely days 
Shall fatten upon the past ; 
For the stateliest building man can raise 
Is the ivy's food at last. 

Creeping on, where time has been, 
A rare old plant is the ivy green." 

One of the liumorous sketches in " Pickwick" is that 
well-known and oft-quoted description of Sam Welter's 
valentine, which is here inserted. 

" Mr. Weller having obtained leave of absence from 
Mr. Pickwick, who in his then state of excitement and 
worry was by no means displeased at being left alone, 
set forth, long before the appointed hour, and, having 
plenty of time at his disposal, sauntered down as far as 
the Mansion House, where he paused and contemplated, 
with a face of great calmness and philosophy, the nu- 
merous cads and drivers of short stages who assemble 
near that famous place of resort, to the great terror and 
confusion of the old-lady population of these realms. 
Havmg loitered here for half an hour or so, Mr. Weller 
turned, and began wending his way towards Leadenhall 
Market, through a variety of by-streets and courts. 
As he was sauntering away his spare time, and stopped 
to look at almost every object that met his gaze, it is by 



CHARLES DICKENS. ' 57 

no means surprising that Mr. Weller should have paused 
before a small stationer's and print-seller's window ; but, 
without further explanation, it does appear surprising 
that his eyes should have no sooner rested on certain 
pictures which were exposed for sale therein, than he 
gave a sudden start, smote his right leg with great vehe- 
mence, and exclaimed with energy, ' If it hadn't been 
for this, I should ha' forgot all about it till it was too 
late ! ' 

" The particular picture on which Sam Weller 's eyes 
were fixed, as he said this, was a highly-colored repre- 
sentation of a couple of human hearts skcAvered together 
with an arrow, cooking before a cheerful fire, while a 
male and female cannibal, in modern attire, — the gentle- 
man being clad in a blue coat and white trousers, and 
the lady in a deep-red pelisse with a parasol of the same, 
— were approaching the meal with hungry eyes, up a 
serpentine gravel-path leading thereunto. A decidedly 
indelicate young gentleman, in a pair of wings and 
nothing else, was depicted as superintending the cook- 
ing ; a representation of the spire of the church in Lang- 
ham Place, London, appeared in the distance ; and the 
whole formed a ' valentine,' of which, as a written in- 
scription in the window testified, there was a large 
assortment within, which the shopkeeper pledged him- 
self to dispose of to his countrymen generally, at the 
reduced rate of one-and-sixpence each. 

"'I should ha' forgot it; I should certainly ha' for- 



58 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

got it I ' said Sam : so saying, he at once stepped into 
the stationer's shop, and requested to be served with 
a sheet of the best gilt-edged letter-paper, and a hard- 
nibbed pen which could be warranted not to splutter. 
These articles having been promptly supplied, he walked 
on direct towards Leadenhall Market at a good round 
pace, very different from his recent lingering one. 
Looldng round him, he there beheld a sign-board, on 
which the painter's art had delineated something re- 
motely resembling a cerulean elephant with an aquiline 
nose in lieu of a trunk. Rightly conjecturing that this 
was the Blue Boar himself, he stepped into the house, 
and inquired concerning his parent. 

" ' He won't be here this three-quarters of an hour 
or more,' said the young lady who superintended the 
domestic arrangements of the Blue Boar. 

u 4 "\yerry good, my dear,' replied Sam. ' Let me 
have nine-penn'orth o' brandy-and-water luke, and the 
inkstand, — will you, miss ? ' 

"The brandy - and - water luke and the inkstand 
having been carried into the little parlor, and the young 
lady having carefully flattened down the coals to pre- 
vent their blazing, and carried away the poker to pre- 
clude the possibility of the fire being stirred without 
the full privity and concurrence of the Blue Boar being 
first had and obtained, Sam Weller sat himself down 
in a box near the stove, and pulled out the sheet of 
gilt-edged letter-paper and the hard-nibbed pen. Then, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 69 

looking carefully at the pen to see that there were no 
hairs in it, and dusting down the table, so that there 
might be no crumbs of bread under the paper, Sam 
tucked up the cuffs of his coat, squared his elbows, and 
composed himself to write. 

" To ladies and gentlemen who are not in the habit 
of devoting themselves practically to the science of pen- 
manship, writing a letter is no very easy task ; it being 
always considered necessary in such cases for the writer 
to recline his head on his left arm, so as to place his eyes 
as nearly as possible on a level with the paper, while 
glancing sideways at the letters he is constructing, to 
form with his tongue imaginary characters to corre- 
spond. These motions, although unquestionably of the 
greatest assistance to original composition, retard, in 
some degree, the progress of the writer ; and Sam had 
unconsciously been a full hour and a half writing words 
in small text, smearing out wrong letters with his little 
finger, and putting in new ones which required going 
over very often to render them visible through the old 
blots, when he was roused by the opening of the door 
and the entrance of his parent. 

" ' Veil, Sammy,' said the father. 

" ' Veil, my Prooshan Blue,' responded the son, lay- 
ing down his pen. ' What's the last bulletin about moth- 
er-in-law ? ' 

" * Mrs. Veller passed a wery good night, but is un- 
common perwerse and unpleasant this mornin'. Signed 



60 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

upon oath, S. Veller, Esquire, Senior. That's the last 
vun as wos issued, Sammy,' replied Mr. Weller, untying 
his shawl. 

" ' No better yet? ' inquired Sam. 

" ' All the symptoms aggerawated,' replied Mr. Wel- 
ler, shaking his head. ' But wot's that you're a doin' 
of ? Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, Sammy ? ' 

" ' I've done now,' said Sam, with slight embarrass- 
ment : ' I've been a writin'.' 

" ' So I see,' replied Mr. Weller. ' Not to any young 
'oman, I hope, Sammy.' 

" ' Why it's no use a sayin' it ain't,' replied Sam. ' It's 
a walentine.' 

" ' A wot ! ' exclaimed Mr. Weller, aj)parently horror- 
stricken by the word. 

" ' A walentine,' replied Sam. 

" ' Samivel, Samivel,' said Mr. Weller, in reproachful 
accents, ' I didn't think you'd ha' done it. Arter the 
warnin' you've had o' your father's wicious propensities ; 
arter all I've said to you upon this here wery subject ; 
arter actiwally seein' and bein' in the company o' your 
own mother-in-law, vich I should ha' thought wos a 
moral lesson as no man could never ha' forgotten to his 
dyin' day, — I didn't think you'd ha' done it, Sammy, I 
didn't think you'd ha' done it ! ' These reflections were 
too much for the good old man. He raised Sam's tum- 
bler to his lips, and drank off its contents. 

" ' Wot's the matter now ? ' said Sam. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 61 

" ' Nev'r mind, Sammy,' replied Mr. Weller. ' It'll be 
a wery agonizin' trial to me at my time of life ; but I'm 
pretty tough, that's vun consolation, as the wery old 
turkey remarked wen the farmer said he wos afeerd he 
should be obliged to kill him for the London market.' 

" ' Wot'U be a trial ? ' inquired Sam. 

" ' To see you married, Sammy, — to see you a dilluded 
wictim, and thinkin' in your innocence that it's all wery 
capital,' replied Mr. Weller. ' It's a dreadful trial to 
a father's feelin's, that 'ere, Sammy.' 

" ' Nonsense,' said Sam. ' I ain't a goin' to get mar- 
ried : don't you fret yourself about that. I know you're 
a judge of these things. Order in your pipe, and I'll 
read you the letter. There ! ' 

" We cannot distinctly say whether it was the pros- 
pect of the pipe, or the consolatory reflection that a 
fatal disposition to get married ran in the famil}^ and 
couldn't be helped, which calmed Mr. Weller's feelings, 
and caused his grief to subside. We should be rather 
disposed to say that the result was attained by com- 
bining the two sources of consolation ; for he repeated 
the second in a low tone, very frequently, ringing the 
bell, meanwhile, to order in the first. He then divested 
himself of his upper coat ; and lighting the pi^DC, and 
placing himself in front of the fire with his back to- 
wards it, so that he could feel its full heat and recline 
against the mantle-piece at the same time, turned to- 
wards Sam, and, with a countenance greatly mollified 



62 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

by the softening influence of tobacco, requested him to 
' fire away.' 

" Sam dipped his pen into the ink, to be ready for any 
corrections, and began, with a very theatrical air, — 

'•'"Lovely .'" 

"'Stop,' said ]Mr. Weller, ringing the bell. 'A 
double glass o' the inwariable, my dear.' 

'•'Very well, sir,' replied the girl, who with great 
quickness appeared, yanished, returned, and disap- 
peared. 

" 'They seem to know your ways here,' observed Sam. 

"'Yes,' rephed his father : 'I've been here before in 
my time. Go on, Sammy.' 

" ' " Lovely creetur,*' ' repeated Sam. 

" ' 'Tain't in poetry, is it ? ' interposed his father. 

" ' Xo, no,' rephed Sam. 

" ' Wery glad to hear it,' said Mr. Weller. ' Poetry's 
unnat'ral : no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on 
Ijoxin' day, or Warren's blackin', or Rowland's oil, or 
some o' them low fellows ; never you let yourself down 
to talk poetry, my boy. Begin agin, Sammy.' 

" Mr. Weller resumed his pipe with a critical solemni- 
ty; and Sam once more commenced, and read as fol- 
lows : — 

" ' " Lovely creetur, i feel myself a dammed " ' — 

" ' That ain't proper,' said Mr. Weller, taking his pipe 
fi'om his mouth. 

"'No: it ain't "dammed,"' observed Sam, holding 



CHARLES DICKENS. 63 

the letter up to the hght, 'it's "shamed," — there's a 
blot there, — "I feel myself ashamed."' 

" ' Wery good,' said Mr. Weller. ' Go on.' 

u (. u pggi myself ashamed, and completely cir " — I 
forget what this here word is,' said Sam, scratching his 
head with the pen, in vain attempts to remember. 

" ' Why don't you look at it, then ? ' inquhed jMr. 
Weller. 

"' So I am a looldn' at it,' replied Sam ; ' but there's 
another blot. Here's a " c," and a " i," and a " d." ' 

" ' Circumwented, p'haps,' suggested Mr. Weller. 

" ' No : it ain't that,' said Sam : ' " circumscribed ; " 
that's it.' 

" ' That ain't as good a word as circumwented, Sam- 
my,' said Mr. Weller gravely. 

" ' Think not ? ' said Sam. 

" ' Nothin' like it,' replied his father. 

" ' But don't you think it means more ? ' inquired Sam. 

"'Veil, p'raps it is a more tenderer word,' said Mr. 
Weller, after a moment's reflection. ' Go on, Sammy.' 

" ' " Feel myself ashamed and completely circum- 
scribed in a dressin' of you ; for j^ou a7^e a nice gal, and 
nothin' but it." ' 

" ' That's a wery pretty sentiment,' said the elder Mr. 
Weller, removing his pipe to make way for the remark. 

" ' Yes, I think it is rayther good,' observed Sam, 
highly flattered. 

" 'Wot I like in that 'ere style of writin," ' said the 



64 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

elder Mr. Weller, ' is, that tliere ain't no callin' names 
in it, — no Wenuses, nor nothin' o' that kind. Wot's 
the good o' callin' a young 'ooman a Wenus or a angel, 
Sammy ? ' 

" ' Ah ! what, indeed ? ' replied Sam. 

" ' You might jist as well call her a griffin, or a uni- 
corn, or a king's-arms at once, which is wery well 
known to be a collection o' fabulous animals,' added 
Mr. Weller. 

••' ' Just as well,' replied Sam. 

" ' Drive on, Sammy,' said Mr. Weller. 

" Sam complied with the request, and proceeded as 
follows ; his father continuing to smoke, with a mixed 
expression of wisdom and complacency wliich was par- 
ticularly edifying. 

a c u Afore I see you, I thought all women was 
alike." ' 

" ' So they are,' observed the elder Mr. Weller paren- 
thetically. 

" ' " But now," ' continued Sam, ' " now I find what a 
reg'lar soft-headed, ink-red'lous turnip I must ha' been ; 
for there ain't nobody like you, though I like you better 
than nothin' at all." I thought it best to make that 
rayther strong,' said Sam, looking up. 

t' Mr. Weller nodded approvingly, and Sam resumed. 

" ' '' So I take the privilidge of the day, Mary, my dear, 
— as the gen'l'm'n in difficulties did, ven he valked out of 
a Sunday, — to tell you, that, the first and only time I see 



CHARLES DICKENS. 65 

you, your likeness was took on my hart in much quicker 
time and brighter colors than ever a likeness was took 
by the prof eel macheen (wich p'raps you may have 
heerd on, Mary, my dear), altho' it does finish a portrait 
and put the frame and glass on complete, with a hook 
at the end to hang it up b}^, and all in two minutes and 
a quarter/' ' 

" ' I am afeered that werges on the poetical, Sammy,' 
said Mr. Weller dubiously. 

" ' Xo, it don't,' replied Sam, reading on very quickly, 
to avoid contesting the point, — 

" ' " Except of me, Mary, my dear, as your walentine, 
and think over what I've said. My dear Mary, I will 
now conclude." That's all,' said Sam. 

" ' That's rather a sudden pull-up, ain't it, Sammy ? ' 
inquired Mr. Weller. 

" ' Not a bit on it,' said Sam. ' She'll vish there wos 
more, and that's the great art o' letter-writin.' 

" ' Well,' said Mr. Weller, ' there's somethin' in that ; 
and I wish yoiu^ mother-in-law 'ud only conduct her 
conwersation on the same gen-teel principle. Ain't you 
agoin' to sign it ? ' 

" ' That's the difficulty,' said Sam. ' I don't know 
what to sign it.' 

" ' Sign it Veller,' said the oldest surviving proprietor 
of that name. 

" ' Won't do,' said Sam. ' Never sign a walentine 
with your own name.' 

6 



66 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' Sign it " Pickvick," then,' said Mr. Weller. ' It's 
a wery good name, and a easy one to spell.' 

" ' The wery thing,' said Sam. ' I could end with a 
werse : what do you think ? ' 

" ' I don't like it, Sam,' rejoined Mr. Weller. ' I never 
know'd a respectable coachman as wrote poetry, 'cept 
one, as made an affectin' copy o' werses the night afore 
he wos hung for highway robbery ; and he was only a 
Cambervell man : so even that's no rule.' 

" But Sam was not to be dissuaded from the poetical 
idea that had occurred to him ; so he signed the let- 
ter, — 

" * Your love-sick 
Pickwick.' 

And, having folded it in a very intricate manner, 
squeezed a down-hill direction in one corner : ' To 
Mary, Housemaid, at Mr. Nupkins's Mayor's, Ipswich, 
Suffolk ; ' and put it into his pocket, wafered, and ready 
for the General Post." 

Among the old English customs which modern eyes 
look upon with contempt and displeasure, that of im- 
prisonment for debt is one of the worst. In " Pick- 
wick," the death in prison of one confined for years for 
debt is thus touchingly described : — 

" ' I'm sorry to say that your landlord's wery bad to- 
night, sir,' said Roker, setting down the glass, and in- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 67 

specting the lining of his hat preparatory to putting it 
on again. 

" ' What ! The Chancery prisoner ! ' exclaimed Mr. 
Pickvvdck. 

" ' He won't be a Chancery prisoner wery long, sir,' 
replied Roker, turning his hat round, so as to get the 
maker's name right-side upwards, as he looked into it. 

" ' You make my blood run cold,' said Mr. Pickwick. 
' What do you mean ? ' 

" ' He's been consumptive for a long time past,' said 
Mr. Roker, ' and he's taken wery bad in the breath to- 
night. The doctor said, six months ago, that nothing 
but change of air could save him.' 

" ' Great Heaven ! ' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick : ' has 
this man been slowly murdered by the law for six 
months ? ' 

" ' I don't know about that,' replied Roker, weighing 
the hat by the brims in both hands. ' I suppose he'd 
have been took the same, wherever he was. He went 
into the infirmary this morning ; the doctor says his 
strength is to be kept up as much as possible ; and the 
warden's sent him wine and broth and that, from liis 
own house. It's not the warden's fault, you know, sir.' 

" ' Of course not,' replied Mr. Pickwick hastily. 

" ' I'm afraid, however,' said Roker, shaking his head, 
' that it's all up with him. I offered Neddy two six- 
penn'orths to one upon it just now ; but he wouldn't 
take it, and quite right. Thankee, sir. Good -night, 
sir.' 



68 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' Stay,' said Mr. Pickwick earnestly. ' Where is 
this infirmary ? ' 

" ' Just over where you slept, sir,' replied Roker. ' I'll 
show you, if you like to come.' Mr. Pickwick snatched 
up his hat without spealdng, and followed at once. 

" The turnkey led the way in silence; and, gently rais- 
ing the latch of the room-door, motioned Mr. Pickwick 
to enter. It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a 
number of stump bedsteads made of iron, on one of 
which lay stretched the shadow of a man, — wan, pale, 
and ghastly. • His breathing was hard and thick, and he 
moaned painfully as it came and went. At the bedside 
sat a short old man in a cobbler's apron, who, by the aid 
of a pair of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible 
aloud. It was the fortunate legatee. 

" The sick man laid his hand upon his attendant's 
arm, and motioned him to stop. He closed the book, 
and laid it on the bed. 

" ' Open the window,' said the sick man. 

" He did so. The noise of carriages and carts, the 
rattle of wheels, the cries of men and boys, all the busy 
sounds of a mighty multitude instinct with life and occu- 
pation, blended into one deep murmur, floated into the 
room. Above the hoarse, loud hum, arose, from time to 
time, a boisterous laugh ; or a scrap of some jingling 
song, shouted forth by one of the giddy crowd, would 
strike upon the ear for an instant, and then be lost 
amidst the roar of voices and the tramp of footsteps, — 



CHARLES DICKENS. 69 

the brealdng^ of the billows of the restless sea of life, 
that rolled heavily on, without. Melancholy sounds to 
a quiet listener, at any tim'e : how melancholy to the 
watcher by the bed of death ! 

" ' There's no air here,' said the sick man faintly. 
' The place pollutes it. It was fresh round about, when 
I walked there, years ago ; but it grows hot and heavy 
in passing these walls. I cannot breathe it.' 

" ' We have breathed it together for a long time,' said 
the old man. ' Come, come.' 

" There was a short silence, during which the two 
spectators approached the bed. The sick man drew 
a hand of his old fellow-prisoner towards him, and, 
pressing it affectionately between his own, retained it in 
his grasp. 

" ' I hope,' he gasped after a while, — so faintly that 
they bent their ears close over the bed to catch the half- 
formed sounds his pale lips gave vent to, — ' I hope my 
merciful Judge will bear in mind my heavy punishment 
on earth. Twenty years, my friend, twenty years in 
this hideous grave ! My heart broke when niy child 
died, and I could not even kiss him in his little cofQn. 
My loneliness since then, in all this noise and riot, has 
been very dreadful. May God forgive me ! He has 
seen my sohtary, lingering death.' 

" He folded his hands, and, murmuring something 
more they could not h'ear, fell into a sleep, — only a 
sleep at first, for they saw him smile. 



70 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

" They whispered together for a little time ; and the 
turnkey, stooping over the pillow, drew hastily back. 
' He has got his discharge ! 'said the man. 

" He had. But he had grown so like death in life, 
that they knew not when he died." 



CHAPTER IV. 



FAMOUS. 



The Novelist. — E. P. Whipple's Testimony. — Oliver Twist. — Asking for More. — 
Pauperism in England. — Nancy Sykes. — Jew Fagin. 

" Thou hast a charmed cup, O Fame I 
A draught that mantles high, 
And seems to lift this earthly frame 

Above mortality." Mrs. Hemans. 

" I have made thee a great name, like unto the name of the great men that are in 
the earth." — 2 Sam. vii. 9. 




HE brilliant " Pickwick Papers " prepared 
the way for yet greater success. Leading 
London publishers made proposals at once 
to the popular author. He accepted the 
editorship of Mr. Bentley's " Miscellany," 
and in the second number (February, 1837) appeared 
the first instalment of " Oliver Twist." This became at 
once a favorite story, and Mr. Dickens took rank at once 
among novelists. " Oliver Twist " was " admirably illus- 
trated by George Cruikshank, and is still regarded as 
one of the author's most striking novels." It talked in 
story fashion of the cruelties and abuses that prevailed 
too largely in certain public institutions, and was hap- 

71 



72 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

pily instrumental in repealing laws that sanctioned gross 
injustice. One can hardly read a page of his novels, 
without perceiving that Mr. Dickens has contended 
bravely against some hidden wrong in society ; and while 
adding to English literature many gems, and a host of 
imperishable creations, has at the same time rebuked 
wrong fearlessly, and taught the lessons of humanity 
and good will. 

A portion of the manuscript of " Oliver Twist," which 
originally, as above stated, appeared in Bentley's " Mis- 
cellany," is still in Mr. Bentley's possession. " The 
British Museum " says one, " might fittingly place it by 
the side of the manuscript of Sterne's ' Sentimental Jour- 
ney.' " As a novelist, our own brilliant essayist, E. P. 
Whipple, says of Mr. Dickens,* " Dickens, as a novelist 
and prose poet, is to be classed in the front rank of the 
noble company to which he belongs. He has revived 
the novel of genuine practical life as it existed in the 
works of Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith, but, at the 
same time, has given to his materials an individual coloring 
and expression peculiarly his own. His characters, like 
those of his great exemplars, constitute a world of their 
own, whose truth to Nature every reader instinctively 
recognizes in connection with their trutli to Dickens. • 
Fielding delineates with more exquisite art, standing 
more as the spectator of his personages, commenting on 
their actions with an ironical humor and a seeming inno- 

* North- American Review, Ixix., 392, 393, October, 1849. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 73 

cence of insiglit, which pierces not only into but through 
their very nature, laying bare their most unconscious 
scenes of action, and in every instance indicating that 
he understands them better than they understand them- 
selves. It is this perfection of knowledge and insight 
which gives to his novels their naturalness, their free- 
dom of movement, and their value as lessons in human 
nature, as well as consummate representations of actual 
life. Dickens's eye for the forms of things is as accu- 
rate as Fielding's, and his range of vision more extended; 
but he does not probe so profoun^-ly into the heart of 
what he sees, and he is more led away from the sim- 
j)licity of truth by a tricky spirit of fantastic exagger- 
ation. Mentally he is indisputably below Fielding ; but 
in tenderness, in pathos, in sweetness and purity of feel- 
ing, in that comprehensiveness of sympathy which 
springs from a sense of brotherhood with mankind, he 
is indisputably above him." 

.'• Mr. Dickens gave in his preface to " Oliver Twist," 
' good and sufficient reasons for the choice of the charac- 
ters there represented, in the following words : — 

'' I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good 
may not be drawn from the vilest evil. I have alwa3^s 
believed this to be a recognized and established truth, 
laid down by the greatest men the world has ever seen, 
constantly acted upon by the best and wisest natures, 



74 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

and confirmed by the reason and experience of every 
thinking mind. 

" In this spirit, when I wished to show, in little Oliver, 
the principle of good surviving through every adverse 
circumstance, and triumphing at last ; and when I consid- 
ered among what companions I could try him best, hav- 
ing regard to that kind of men into whose hands he would 
most naturally fall, — I bethought myself of those who 
figure in these volumes. When I came to discuss the 
subject more maturely with myself, I saw many strong 
reasons for pursuing tjie course to which I was inclined. 
I had read of thieves by scores, — seductive fellows (ami- 
able for the most part), faultless in dress, plump in 
pocket, choice in horse-flesh, bold in bearing, fortunate 
in gallantry, great at a song, a bottle, a pack of cards, or 
dice-box, and fit companions for the bravest. But I had 
never met (except in Hogarth) with the miserable 
reality. It appeared to me, that to draw a knot of such 
associates in crime as really do exist ; to paint them in 
all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the 
squalid poverty of their lives ; to show them, as they 
really are, forever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest 
paths of life, with the great, black, ghastly gallows 
closing up their prospect, turn them where they may, — 
it appeared to me that to do this would be to attempt 
a something which was greatly needed, and which would 
be a service to society. And, therefore, I did it as I best 
could." 



CHARLES DICKENS. 75 

Oliver Twist commenced life in a workhouse. The 
graphic picture drawn by Mr. Dickens of the workhouses 
in his day was not one calculated to give a favorable 
impression of English benevolence or justice. " Oliver 
asking for more " has become a proverb. The manner 
in which the fare of the poor boys was dealt out to 
them, is thus described : — 

" The room in which the boys were fed was a large 
stone hall, with a copper at one end, out of which the 
the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and as- 
sisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at meal- 
times. Of this festive composition, each boy had one por- 
ringer, and no more, except on occasions of great pub- 
he rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of 
bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The 
boys polished them with their spoons till they shone 
again ; and, when they had performed this operation 
(which never took very long, the spoons being nearly 
as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the 
copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have de- 
voured the very bricks of which it was composed ; em- 
ploying themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers 
most assiduously, with a view of catching up any stray 
splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. 
Boys have, generally, excellent apj)etites. Oliver Twist 
and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starva- 
tion for three months : at last, they got so voracious and 



76 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, 
and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father 
had kept a small cook's shop), hinted darkly to his com- 
panions, that, unless he had another basin of gruel per 
diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat 
the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a 
weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry 
eye ; and they implicitly believed him. A council was 
held : lots were cast who should walk up to the master 
after supper that evening, and ask for more ; and it 
fell to Oliver Twist. 

" The evening arrived : the boys took their places. The 
master, in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the 
copper ; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind 
him ; the gruel was served out ; and a long grace was 
said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared : 
the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver, 
while his next neighbors nudged him. Child as he was, 
he was desperate with hunger, and recldess with misery. 
He rose from the table ; and advancing to the master, 
basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his 
own temerity, — 

" ' Please, sir, I want some more.' 

" The master was a fat, healthy man ; but he turned 
very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the 
small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for sup- 
port to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with 
wonder, the boys with fear. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 77 

" ' What ! ' said the master at length, in a faint voice. 

" ' Please, sir,' replied Oliver, ' I want some more.' 

" The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the 
ladle, pinioned him in his arms, and shrieked aloud for 
the beadle. 

" The board was sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. 
Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and, 
addressing the gentleman in the high-chair, said, — 

" ' Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir ! Oliver Twist 
has asked for more ! ' 

" There was a general start. Horror was depicted on 
every countenance. 

" ' For more ! ' said Mr. Limbkins. ' Compose jom:- 
self. Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I under- 
stand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the 
supper allotted by the dietary ? ' 

" ' He did, sir,' replied Bumble. 

" ' That boy will be hung,' said the gentleman in the 
white waistcoat. ' I know that boy will be hung.' 

" Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman's opin- 
ion. An animated discussion took place. Oliver was 
ordered into instant confinement ; and a bill was next 
morning pasted on the outside of the gate, offering a 
reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oli- 
ver Twist off the hands of the parish. In other words, 
five pounds and Oliver Twist were offered to any man 
or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade, busi- 
ness, or caUing." 



78 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

The pen of the novelist was not lacking in power 
when he portrayed the abject wretchedness of some of 
the misera]:)le dwellers in crowded haunts of poverty, and 
showed, with a noble fearlessness, the heartless treat- 
ment they sometimes received from those whose duty it 
was to aid them to the extent of their power, or, at least, 
to manifest a Christian sympathy for them. Here is an 
example of such pen-pictures, horrible in its truthful- 
ness. Oliver had been requested by his employer, the 
undertaker, to accompany him : — 

" They walked on, for some time, through the most 
crowded and densely-inhabited part of the town ; and 
then, striking down a narrow street more dirty and mis- 
erable than any they had jet passed through, paused to 
look for the house which was the object of their search. 
The houses on either side were high and large, but very 
old, and tenanted by people of the poorest class, as 
their neglected appearance would have sufficiently de- 
noted, without the concurrent testimony afforded by 
the squalid looks of the few men and women, who, 
with folded arms and bodies half-doubled, occasionally 
skulked along. A great many of the tenements had 
shop-fronts ; but these were fast closed, and mouldering 
away, only the upper rooms being inhabited. Some 
houses which had become insecure from age and decay 
were prevented from falling into the street by huge 
beams of wood reared against the walls, and firmly 



CHARLES DICKENS. 79 

planted in the road : but even these crazy dens seemed 
to have been selected as the nightly haunts of some 
homeless wretches ; for many of the rough boards, which 
supplied the place of door and window, were wrenched 
from their positions to afford an aperture wide enough 
for the passage of a human body. The kennel was stag- 
nant and filthy. The very rats, which here and there lay 
putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine. 

" There was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the 
open door where Oliver and his master stopped : so, 
groping his way cautiously through the dark passage, 
and bidding Oliver keep close to him, and not be afraid, 
the undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of 
stairs. Stumbling against a door on the landing, he 
rapped at it with his knuckles. 

" It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or four- 
teen. The undertaker at once saw enough of what the 
room contained to know it was the apartment to which 
he had been directed. He stepped in. Oliver followed 
him. 

" There was no fire in the room ; but a man was 
crouching mechanically over the empty stove. An old 
woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the cold hearth, 
and was sitting beside him. There were some ragged 
children in another corner ; and in a small recess, oppo- 
site the door, there lay upon the ground something cov- 
ered with an old blanket. Oliver shuddered as he cast 
his eyes towards the place, and crept involuntarily closer 



80 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

to his master ; for, though it was covered up, the boy 
felt that it was a corpse. 

" The man's face was thin and very pale ; his hair and 
beard were grizzly; his eyes were bloodshot. ^The old 
woman's face was wrinlded ; her two remaining teeth pro- 
truded over her underlip ; and her eyes were bright and 
piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the 
man : they seemed so like the rats he had seen outside. 

'' ' Nobody shall go near her,' said the man, starting 
fiercely up, as the undertaker approched. ' Keep back ! 
d — n 3^ou, keep back, if you've a life to lose I ' 

" ' Nonsense, my good man,' said the undertaker, who 
was pretty well used to misery in all its shapes. ' Non- 
sense ! ' 

*"I tell you,' said the man, — clinching his hands, 
and stamping furiously on the floor, — ' I tell you I 
won't have her put into the ground. She couldn't rest 
there. The worms would worry her, — not eat her, — 
she is so worn aAvay.' 

" The undertaker offered no reply to this raving ; 
but, producing a tape from his pocket, knelt down for a 
moment by the side of the bod}^ 

" ' Ah 1 ' said the man, bursting into tears, and sink- 
ing on his knees at the feet of the dead woman : 
'kneel down, kneel down, — kneel round her, every 
one of 3^ou, and mark my words ! I say she was starved 
to death. I never knew how bad she was, till the fever 
came upon her ; and then her bones were starting 



CHARLES DICKENS. 81 

tliroiigli the skin. There was neither fire nor candle : 
she died in the dark, — in the dark ! She couldn't even 
see her children's faces, though we heard her gasping 
out their names. I begged for her in the streets ; and 
they sent me to prison. When I came back, she was 
d^dng ; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for 
they starved her to death. I swear it before the God 
that saw it ! They starved her ! ' He twined his hands 
in his hair ; and, with a loud scream, rolled grovelling 
upon the floor, his eyes fixed, and the foam covering 
his lips. 

" The terrified children cried bitterly ; but the old 
woman, who had hitherto remained as quiet as if she 
had been wholly deaf to all that passed, menaced them 
into silence. Having unloosed the cravat of the man, 
who still remained extended on the ground, she tottered 
towards the undertaker. 

" ' She was my daughter,' said the old woman, nod- 
ding her head in the direction of the corpse, and 
speaking with an idiotic leer, more ghastly than even 
the presence of death in such a place. ' Lord, Lord ! 
Well, it is strange that I, who gave birth to her, and 
was a woman then, should be alive and merry now, and 
she lying there, — so cold and stiff! Lord, Lord! to 
think of it : it's as good as a play, — as good as a play ! ' 

" As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in 
her hideous merriment, the undertaker turned to go 
away. 



82 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' Stop, stop ! ' said the old woman, in a loud whis- 
per. ' Will she be buried to-morrow, or next day, or 
to-night ? I laid her out ; and I must walk, you know. 
Send me a large cloak, — a good warm one ; for it is bit- 
ter cold. We should have cake and wine, too, before 
we go ! Never mind : send some bread, — only a loaf 
of bread, and a cup of water. Shall we have some 
bread, dear ? ' she said eagerl}^, catching at the under- 
taker's coat, as he once more moved towards the door. 

'^ ' Yes, yes,' said the undertaker, ' of course. Any 
thing you like ! ' He disengaged himself from the old 
woman's grasp, and, drawing Oliver after him, hurried 
away. 

" The next day (the family having been meanwhile 
relieved with a half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, 
left with them by Mr. Bumble himself), Oliver and his 
master returned to the miserable abode ; where JMr. 
Bumble had already arrived, accompanied by four men 
from the workhouse, who were to act as bearers. An 
old black cloak had been thrown over the rags of the 
old woman and the man ; and the bare cof&n, having 
been screwed down, was hoisted on the shoulders of the 
bearers, and carried into the street. 

" ' Now, you must put your best leg foremost, old 
lady ! ' whispered Sowerberry in the old woman's ear : 
' we are rather late ; and it won't do to keep the clergy- 
man waiting. Move on, my men, as quick as you like ! ' 

" Thus directed, the bearers trotted on under their 



CHARLES DICKEXS. 83 

light burden ; and the two mourners kept as near them 
as they could. Mr. Bumble and Sowerberry walked at 
a good smart pace in front ; and Oliver, whose legs were 
not so long as his master's, ran by tke side. 

" There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as 
Mr. Sowerberry had anticipated, however: for when 
they reached the obscure corner of the churchyard in 
which the nettles grew, and where the parish-graves 
were made, the clergyman had not arrived ; and the 
clerk, who was sitting by the vestry-room fire, seemed 
to think it by no means improbable that it might be an 
hour or so before he came. So they put the bier on 
the brink of the grave, and the two mourners w^aited 
patiently in the damp clay, with a cold rain drizzling 
down ; while the ragged boys, whom the spectacle had 
attracted into the churchyard, played a noisy game at 
hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their 
amusements by jumping backward and forward over 
the coffin. Mr. Sowerberry and Bumble, being per- 
sonal friends of the clerk, sat by the fire with him, and 
read the paper. 

" At length, after a lapse of something more than an 
hour, Mr. Bumble and Sowerberry and the clerk were 
seen running towards the grave. Immediately after- 
ward the clergyman appeared, putting on his surplice 
as he came along. Mr. Bumble then thrashed a boy or 
two, to keep up appearances ; and the reverend gentle- 
man, having read as much of the burial-service as could 



84 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

be compressed into four minutes, gave his surplice to the 
clerk, and walked away. 

" ' Now, Bill ! ' said Sowerberry to the grave-digger, 
'fill up!' 

" It was no very difficult task ; for the grave was so 
full that the uppermost coffin was within a few feet of 
the surface. The grave-digger shovelled in the earth, 
stamped it loosely down with his feet, shouldered his 
spade, and walked off, followed by the boys, who mur- 
mured very loud complaints at the fun being over so 
soon. 

" ' Come, my good fellow ! ' said Bumble, tapping the 
man on the back. ' They want to shut up the yard.' 

" The man, who had never once moved since he had 
taken his station by the grave-side, started, raised his 
head, stared at the person who had addressed him, 
walked forward for a few paces, and fell down in a 
swoon. The crazy old woman was too much occupied 
in bewailing the loss of her cloak (which the undertaker 
had taken off) to pay him any attention : so they threw 
a can of cold water over him ; and, when he came to, 
saw him safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate, 
and departed on their different ways." 

At the present day, when so much more is done to 
reclaim the fallen women than was ever done before, a 
rare interest attaches to the chapter in " Oliver Twist " 
where poor lost Nancy converses with pure Rose May- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 85 

lie. Hoocrs exquisitely touching poem, " The Bridge 
of Sighs," and Miss Phelps's far later " Hedged In," are 
remembered as one reads the words of Dickens, written 
so man}^ years ago, and showing a Christian sympathy 
with the outcast. Read the description of the interview 
between the two young women. Poor Nancy ! — 

" The girl's life had been squandered in the streets 
and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of 
London : but there was something of the woman's ori- 
ginal nature left in her still ; and when she heard a light 
step approaching the door opposite to that by which she 
had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the 
small room would in another moment contain, she felt 
burdened with the sense of her own deep shame, and 
shrank as though she could scarcely bear the presence 
of her with whom she had sought this interview. 

" But struggling with these better feelings was pride, 
the vice of the lowest and most debased creature no 
•less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable 
companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of 
low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails 
and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows it- 
self, — even this degraded being felt too proud to betray 
a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought 
a weakness, but which alone connected her with that 
humanity of which her wasting life had obliterated so 
many, many traces when a very child. 



86 LIFE AND WIUTJNGS OF 

" She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the 
figure which presented itself was that of a slight and 
beautiful girl ; and then, bending them on the ground, 
tossed her head with affected carelessness, as she said, — 

" ' It's a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had 
taken offence, and gone away, as many would have done, 
you'd have been sorry for it one day, and not without 
reason, either.' 

" ' I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to 
3'ou,' replied Rose. ' Do not think of that. Tell me 
why you wished to see me. I am the person you in- 
quired for.' 

" The Idnd tone of this answer, the sweet voice, 
the gentle manner, the absence of any accent of haugh- 
tiness or displeasure, took the girl completely by sur- 
prise, and she burst into tears. 

'" O lady, lady ! ' she said, clasping her hands pas- 
sionately before her face : ' if there was more like you, 
there would be fewer like me ! There would, — there 
would ! ' 

" ' Sit down,' said Rose earnestly : ' you distress me. 
If you are in poverty or affliction, I shall be truly glad 
to relieve you if I can. I shall indeed. Sit down. ' 

" ' Let me stand, lady,' said the girl, still weeping ; 
" and do not speak to me so kindly till you know me 
better. It is growing late. Is — is — that door shut? ' 

" ' Yes,' said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be 
nearer assistance in case she should require it. ' Why ? ' 



CHARLES DICKENS. 87 

" ' Because,' said the girl, ' I am about to put my life, 
and the lives of others, in your hands. I am the girl 
that dragged little Oliver back to old Fagin's the Jew's, 
on the night when he went out from the house in Pen- 
tonville.' 

" ' You ! ' said Rose Maylie. 

" ' I, lady ! ' replied the girl. ' I am the infamous 
creature you have heard of, that lives among the thieves, 
and that never, from the first moment I can recollect my 
eyes and senses opening on London streets, have known 
any better life, or kinder words than they have given me, 
— so help me God ! Do not mind shrinking openly from 
me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look 
at me ; but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall 
back, as I make my way along the crowded pavement. 

" ' What dreadful things are these ! ' said Rose, invol- 
untarily falling from her strange companion. 

" ' Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,' cried 
the girl, ' that you had friends to care for and keep you 
in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst 
of cold and hunger and riot and drunkenness, and — 
and something worse than all, as I have been from my 
cradle. I may use the word ; for the alley and the gut- 
ter were mine, as they will be my deathbed.' 

" ' I jjity you ! ' said Rose in a broken voice. ' It 
wrings my heart to hear you ! ' 

" ' Heaven bless you for your goodness ! ' rejoined the 
girl. ' If you knew what I am sometimes, 3^ou would 



88 LIFE AND WAITINGS OF 

pity me indeed. But I have stolen away from those 
who wonld surely murder me if they knew I had been 
here to tell you Avhat I have overheard. Do you know 
a man named iMonks ? ' 

" ' No,' said Rose. 

" ' He knows you,' rephed the girl, ' and knew you 
were here ; for it was by hearing him tell the place that 
I found you out.' 

" ' I never heard the name,* said Rose. 

" ' Then he goes by some other amongst us,' rejoined 
the girl ; ' which I more than thought before. Some time 
ago, and soon after Oliver was put into your house on 
the night of the robbery, I — suspecting this man — 
listened to a conversation held between him and Fagin 
in the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that 
Monks — the man I asked you about, you know " — 

" ' Yes,' said Rose, ' I understand.' 

" — ' That Monks,' pursued the girl, ' had seen him 
accidentally with two of our boys on the day we first 
lost him, and had known him directly to be the same 
child that he was watching for, though I couldn't make 
out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that, if 
Oliver was got back, he should have a certain sum ; and 
he was to have more for making him a thief, which this 
Monks wanted for some purpose of his own.' 

" ' For what purpose ? ' asked Rose. 

" ' He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I 
listened*, in the hope of finding out,' said the girl ; ' and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 89 

there are Dot many people besides me that could have 
got out of their way in time to escape discovery. But 
I did ; and I saw him no more till last night.' 

" ' And what occurred then ? ' 

" ' I'll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. 
Again they went up stairs ; and I, wrapping myself up 
so that my shadow should not betray me, again listened 
at the door. The first words I heard Monks say were 
these : ' So the only proofs of the boy's identity lie at 
the bottom of the river, and the old hag that re- 
ceived them from the mother is rottino: in her coffin.' 
They laughed, and talked of his success in doing 
this : and Monks, talldng on about the boy, and 
getting very wild, said, that, though he had got the 
young devil's money safely now, he'd rather have had it 
the other way ; for what a game it would have been to 
have brought down the boast of the father's will, by 
driving him through every jail in town, and then haul- 
ing him up for some capital felony, which Fagin could 
easily manage, after having made a good profit of him 
besides.' 

"'What is all this? ' said Rose. 

" ' The truth, lady, though it comes from mj lips,' 
replied the girl. ' Then he said, with oaths common 
enough in my ears, but strange to yours, that, if he could 
gratify his hatred by taking the boy's life without bring- 
ing his own neck in danger, he would : but, as he couldn't, 
he'd be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in 



90 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

life ; and, i-f he took advantage of his birth and history, 
he might harm him yet. ' In short, Fagin,' he says, 
' Jew as you are, you never laid such snares as I'll con- 
trive for my young brother Oliver.' 

" ' His brother ! ' exclaimed Rose. 

" ' Those were his words,' said Nancy, glancing un- 
easily round, as she had scarcely ceased to do since she 
began to speak ; for a vision of Sykes haunted her per- 
petually. ' And more. When he spoke of you and the 
other lady, and said it seemed contrived by Heaven, or 
the Devil, against him, that Oliver should come into 
your hands, he laughed, and said there was some com- 
fort in that too ; for how many thousands and hundreds 
of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had 
them, to know who your two-legged spaniel Avas ! ' 

*' ' You do not mean,' said Rose, turning very pale, 
' to tell me that this was said in earnest ? ' 

'' ' He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever 
did,' replied the girl, shaking her head. ' He is an ear- 
nest man when his hatred is up. I know many who do 
worse things ; but I'd rather listen to them all a dozen 
times than to that Monks once. It is growing late, and 
I have to reach home without suspicion of having been 
on such an errand as this. I must get back quickly,' 

" ' But what can I do ? ' said Rose. ' To what use can 
I turn this communication without you ? Back ! Why 
do you wish to return to companions you paint in such 
terrible colors ? If you repeat this information to a 



CHARLES DICKENS. ,91 

gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from the 
next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety 
without half an hour's delay.' 

" ' I wish to go back,' said the girl. ' I must go back, 
because — how can I tell such things to an innocent 
ladylike you? — because, among the men I have told 
you of, there is one — the most desperate among them 
all — that I can't leave ; no, not even to be saved from 
the life I am leading now.' 

" ' Your having interfered in this dear boy's behalf be- 
fore,' said Rose ; ' your coming here, at so great a risk, 
to tell me what you have heard ; your manner, which 
convinces me of the truth of what you say ; your evi- 
dent contrition, and sense of shame, — all lead me to be- 
lieve that you might be yet reclaimed. Oh ! ' said the 
earnest girl, folding her hands as the tears coursed down 
her face, ' do not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of one 
of your own sex, the first — the first, I do believe — who 
ever aj^pealed to you in the voice of pity and compas- 
sion. Do hear my words, and let me save you yet for 
better things ! ' 

'' ' Lady,' cried the girl, sinking on her knees, ' dear, 
sweet, angel lady, you are the first that ever blessed me 
with such words as these ; and, if I had heard them 
j^ears ago, they might have turned me from a life of sin 
and sorrow ; but it is too late, — it is too late ! ' 

" ' It is never too late,' said Rose, ' for penitence and 
atonement.' 



92 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' It is,' cried the girl, writhing in the agony of her 
mind : ' I cannot leave him now ! I could not be his 
death.' 

" ' Why should you be ? ' asked Rose. 

" ' Nothing could save him,' cried the girl. ' If I told 
others what I have told you, and led to their being 
taken, he would be sure to die. He is the boldest, and 
has been so cruel.' 

" ' Is it possible," cried Rose, ' that, for such a man as 
this, you can resign every future hope, and the certainty 
of immediate rescue ? It is madness.' 

" ' I don't know what it is,' answered the girl : ' I 
only know that it is so ; and not with me alone, but 
with hundreds of others, as bad and wretched as myself. 
I must go back. Whether it is God's wrath for the 
wrong I have done, I do not knov/ : but I am drav/n 
back to him through every suffering and ill-usage ; and 
should be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his 
hand at last.' 

" ' What am I to do ? ' said Rose. ' I should not let 
you depart from me thus.' 

" ' You should, lady, and I know you will,' rejoined 
the girl, rising. ' You will not stop my going, because I 
have trusted in your goodness, and forced no promise 
from you, as I might have done.' 

'' ' Of what use, then, is the communication jou. have 
made ?' said Rose. ' This mystery must be investigated, 
or how will its disclosure to me benefit Oliver, whom 
you are anxious to serve ? ' 



CHARLES DICKENS. 93 

" ' You must have some kind gentleman about you 
that will hear it as a secret, and advise you what to do,' 
rejoined the girl. 

" ^ But where can I find you again, when it is neces- 
sary ? ' asked Rose. ' I do not seek to know where 
these dreadful people live ; but where will you be walk- 
ing, or passing, at any settled period from this time ? ' 

" ' Will you promise me that you will have my secret 
strictly kept, and come alone, or with the only other 
person that knows it, and that I shall not be watched 
or followed ? ' asked the girl. 

" ' I promise you solemnly,' answered Rose. 

" ' Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock 
strikes twelve,' said the girl, without hesitation, ' I will 
walk on London Bridge, if I am alive.' 

" ' Stay another moment,' interposed Rose, as the girl 
moved hurriedly towards the door. ' Think once again 
on your own condition, and the opportunity you have of 
escaping from it. You have a claim on me, not only 
as the voluntary bearer of this intelligence, but as a 
woman lost, almost beyond redemption. Will you re- 
turn to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a 
word can save you ? What fascination is it that can 
take yoLi back, and make you cling to wickedness and 
misery? Oh! is there no chord in your heart that I can 
touch? Is there nothing left to which I can appeal 
against this terrible infatuation ? ' 

" ' When ladies as young and good and beautiful as 



94 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

you are,' replied the girl steadily, ^give away your 
hearts, love will carry you all lengths, — even such as 
you, who have home, friends, other admirers, every 
thing to fill them. When such as I, who have no cer- 
tain roof bat the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or 
death but the hospital-nurse, set our rotten hearts on 
any man, and let him fill the place that has been a 
blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to 
cure us ? Pity us, lady, — pity us for having only one 
feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, 
by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride into a 
new means of violence and suffering.' 

" ' You will,' said Rose after a pause, ' take some 
money from me, which may enable you to live without 
dishonest}^ — at all events until we meet again ? ' 

" ' Not a penny,' replied the girl, waving her hand. 

" ' Do not close your heart against all my efforts to 
help you,' said Rose, stepping gently forward. ' I wish 
to serve you, indeed.' 

" ' You would serve me best, lady,' replied the girl, 
wringing her hands, ' if j^ou could take my life at once ; 
for I have felt more grief to think of what I am to- 
night than I ever did before ; and it would be something 
not to die in the same hell in which I have lived. God 
bless you, sweet lady, and send as much happiness on 
your head as I have brought shame on mine ! ' 

" Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy 
creature turned away ; while Rose Maylie, overpowered 



CHARLES DICKENS. 95 

by this extraordinary interview, wliich had more the 
semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence, 
sank mto a chair, and endeavored to collect her wander- 
ing thoughts." 

Space forbids, in tliis chapter, further selection from 
this soul-reaching novel, save that about the wicked 
Jew's last night on earth, just before he was about to 
meet the penalty so richly deserved. Shakspeare's Jew 
Shylock, and the Jew Fagin of Dickens, will ever live 
in literature as ghastly warnings to those who would 
be wealthy at whatever cost, — weighing honor and in- 
tegrity in the balance against gold and silver. 

As one reads the graphic word-picture of the de- 
parted novelist, one seems to see the court-room, the 
prison, the scaffold. 

" The court was paved from floor to roof with hu- 
man faces. Inquisitive and eager eyes peered from 
every inch of space. From the rail before the dock, 
away into the sharpest angle of the smallest corner in 
the galleries, all looks were fixed upon one man, — the 
Jew. Before him and behind ; above, below, on the 
right, and on the left: he seemed to stand surrounded 
by a firmament, all bright with gleaming eyes. 

" He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with 
one hand resting on the wooden slab before him, the 
other held to his ear, and his head thrust forward to en- 
able him to catch with greater distinctness every word 



96 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

that fell from the presiding judge, who was delivering 
his charge to the jury. At times, he turned his eyes 
sharply upon them, to observe the effect of the slightest 
feather-weight in his favor, and, when the points against 
him were stated with terrible distinctness, looked to- 
wards his counsel, in mute appeal that he would, even 
then, urge something in his behalf. Beyond these man- 
ifestations of anxiety, he stirred not hand or foot. He 
had scarcely moved since the trial began ; and, now that 
the judge ceased to speak, he still remained in the same 
strained attitude of close attention, with his gaze bent 
on him as though he listened still. 

" A slight bustle in the court recalled him to himself. 
Looking round, he saw that the jurymen had turned to- 
gether, to consider of their verdict. As his eyes wan- 
dered to the gallery, he could see the people rising 
above each other to see his face, — some hastily applying 
their glasses to their eyes, and others whispering their 
neighbors with looks expressive of abhorrence. A few 
there were who seemed unmindful of him, and looked 
only to the jury, in impatient wonder how they could 
delay. But" in no one face — not even amoQg the wo- 
men, of whom there were many there — could he read 
the faintest sympathy with himself, or any feeling but 
one of all-absorbing interest that he should be con- 
demned. 

"As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the 
death-like stillness came again ; and, looking back, he 



CHARLES DICKENS. 97 

saw that the jurymen had turned towards the judge. 
Hush ! 

" They only sought permission to retire. 

" He looked wistfully into their faces, one by one, 
when they passed out, as though to see which way the 
greater number leaned; but that was fruitless. The 
jailer touched him on the shoulder. He followed me- 
chanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on a 
chair. The man pointed it out, or he would not have 
seen it. 

" He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the 
people were eating, and some fanning themselves with 
handkerchiefs ; for the crowded place was very hot. 
There was one young man sketching his face in a little 
note-book. He wondered whether it was like, and 
looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point, and 
made another with his knife, as any idle spectator might 
have done. 

" In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards 
the judge, his mind began to busy itself with the fashion 
of his dress, and what it cost, and how he put it on. 
There was an old, fat gentleman on the bench, too, who 
had gone out, some half an hour before, and now came 
back. He wondered within himself whether this man 
had been to get his dinner, what he had had, and AAdiere 
he had had it ; and pursued this train of careless thought 
until some new object caught his eye and roused another. 

'^ Not that all this time his mind was, for an instant, 

7 



98 LIFE AND WAITINGS OF 

free from one oppressive, overwhelming sense of the 
grave that opened at his feet: it was ever present to 
him, but in a vague and general w*ay, and he could not 
fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he trem- 
bled, and turned burning hot at the idea of speedy 
death, he fell to counting the iron spikes before him, 
and Avondering how the head of one had been broken 
off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it 
was. Then he thought of all the horrors of the gallows 
and scaffold, — and stopped to watch a man sprinkling 
the floor to cool it, — and then went on to think again. 

" At length, there was a cry of silence, and a breath- 
less look from all towards the door. The jury returned, 
and passed him close. He could glean nothing from 
their faces : they might as well have been of stone. 
Perfect silence ensued — not a rustle — not a breath. 
Guilty. 

" The building rang with a tremendous shout, and an- 
other, and another ; and then it echoed deep, loud groans, 
that gathered strength as they swelled out, like angry 
thunder. It was a peal of joy from the populace out- 
side, greeting the news that he would die on Monday. 

" The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had any 
thing to say why sentence of death should not be passed 
upon him. He had resumed his listening attitude, and 
looked intently at his questioner while the demand was 
made : but it was twice repeated before he seemed to 
hear it ; and then he only muttered that he was an 



CHARLES DICKENS. 99 

old man — an old man ^ an old man; and so, dropping 
into a whisper, was silent again. 

" The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner 
still stood with the same air and gesture. A woman in 
the gallery uttered some exclamation, called forth by 
this dread solemnity. He looked hastily up as if angry 
at the interruption, and bent forward yet more atten- 
tively. The address was solemn and impressive, the 
sentence fearful to hear. But he stood, like a marble 
figure, without the motion of a nerve. His haggard 
face was still thrust forward, his under-jaw hanging 
down, and his eyes staring out before him, when the 
jailer put his hand upon his arm, and beckoned him 
away. He gazed stupidly about him for an instant, and 
obeyed. 

" They led him through a paved room under the 
court, where some prisoners were waiting till their 
turns came, and others were talking to their friends, 
who crowded round a grate which looked into the open 
5'ard. There was nobody to speak to him : but, as he 
passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visi- 
ble to the people who were clinging to the bars ; and 
they assailed him with opprobrious names, and screeched 
and hissed. He shook his fist, and would have spat 
upon them ; but his conductors hurried him on through 
a gloomy passage, lighted by a few dim lamps, into the 
interior of the prison. 

"Here he was searched, that he might not have 



100 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

about him the means of anticipating the law : this cere- 
mony performed, they led him to one of the condemned 
cells, and left him there — alone. 

" He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, 
which served for seat and- bedstead, and, casting his 
bloodshot eyes upon the ground, tried to collect his 
thoughts. After a while, he began to remember a few 
disjointed fragments of what the judge had said ; though 
it had seemed to him, at the time, that he could not 
hear a word. These gradually fell into their proper 
places, and by degrees suggested more : so that, in a lit- 
tle time, he had the whole, almost as it was delivered. 
To be hanged by the neck till he was dead, — that was 
the end. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead. 

"As it came on very dark, he began to think of all 
the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold, 
some of them through his means. They rose up in 
such quick succession that he could hardly count them. 
He had seen some of them die, — and had joked, too, 'be- 
cause they died with prayers upon their lips. With 
what a rattling noise the drop went down ; and how sud- 
denly they changed from strong and vigorous men to 
dangling heaps of clothes ! 

" Some of them might have inhabited that very cell, 
— sat upon that very spot. It was very dark: why 
didn't they bring a light? The cell had been built for 
many years. Scores of men must have passed their last 
hours there. It was like sitting in a vault strewn with 



CHARLES DICKENS. 101 

dead bodies, — the cap, the noose, the pmioned arms, 
the faces that he knew, even beneath that hideous veil. 
Light! light! 

" At length, when his hands were raw with beating 
against the heavy door and walls, two men appeared, — 
one bearing a candle, which he thrust into an iron can- 
dlestick fixed against the wall ; the other dragging in a 
mattress on which to pass the night, for the prisoner 
was to be left alone no more. 

" Then came night, — dark, dismal, silent night. Other 
watchers are glad to hear the church-clocks strike, 
for they tell of life and coming day. To the Jew, they 
brought despair. The boom of every iron bell came 
laden with the one deep, hollow sound, — Death. What 
availed the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which 
penetrated even there, to him ? It was another form of 
knell, with mockery added to the warning. 

" The day passed off, — day ! There was no day : it 
was gone as soon as come, and night came on again, — 
night so long, and yet so short ; long in its dreadful si- 
lence, and short in its fleeting hours. At one time, he 
raved and blasphemed ; and, at another, howled and tore 
his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had 
come to pray beside him, but he had driven them away 
with curses. They renewed their charitable efforts, and 
he beat them off. . 

" Saturday night. He had only one night more to 
live. And, as he thought of this, the day broke, — Sun- 
day. 



102 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" It was n-ot until the night of this last awful day, 
that a withering sense of his helpless, desperate state 
came in its full intensity upon his blighted soul : not 
that he had ever held any defined or positive hope of 
mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more 
than the* dim probability of dying so soon. He had spo- 
ken little to either of the two men who relieved each 
other in their attendance upon him ; and they, for their 
parts, made no effort to rouse his attention. He had sat 
there, awake, but dreaming. Now he started up every 
mmute, and, with gasping moutli and burning skin, hur- 
ried to and fro, in such a paroxysm of fear and wrath, 
that even they — used to such sights — recoiled from 
him with horror. He grew so terrible at last, in all the 
tortures of his evil conscience, that one man could not 
bear to sit there eying him alone ; and so the two kept 
watch together. 

" He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought 
of the past. He had been wounded with some missiles 
from the crowd on the day of his capture, and his head 
was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair hung 
down upon his bloodless face ; his beard was torn, and 
twisted into knots ; his eyes shone with a terrible light ; 
his unwashed flesh craclded with the fever that burnt 
him up. Eight — nine — ten. If it was not a trick to 
frighten him, and those were the real hours treading on 
each other's heels, where would he be when they came 
round again ! Eleven ! Another struck, before the voice 



CHARLES DICKENS. 103 

of tlie previous hour had ceased to "vdbrate. At eight, 
he Avould be the only mourner in his own funeral train ; 
at eleven — 

" Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hid- 
den so much misery and such unspeakable anguish, not 
only from the eyes, but, too often and too long, from the 
thoughts, of men, never held so dread a spectacle as 
that. The few who lingered as they passed, and won- 
dered what the man was doing who was to be hung to- 
morrow, would have slept but ill that night if they 
could have seen him. 

" From early in the evening until nearly midnight, lit- 
tle groups of two and three presented themselves at the 
lodge-gate, and inquired, with anxious faces, whether 
any reprieve had been received. These, being answered 
in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence 
to clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another 
the door from which he must come out, and showed 
where the scaffold would be built, and, walldng with 
unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure up the 
scene. By degrees they fell off, one by one ; and for an 
hour, in the dead of night, the street was left to solitude 
and darkness. 

" The space before the prison was cleared, and a few 
strong barriers, painted black, had been already thrown 
across the road to break the pressure of the expected 
crowd, when Mr. Brownlow and Oliver appeared at the 
wicket, and presented an order of admission to the pris- 



104 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

oner, signed by one of the sheriffs. They were immedi- 
ately admitted into the lodge. 

" ' Is the young gentleman to come too, sir ? ' said the 
man whose duty it was to conduct them. ' It's not a 
sight for children, sir. ' 

" ' It is not indeed, my friend,' rejoined Mr. Brown- 
low ; ' but my business with this man is intimately con- 
nected with him ; and, as this child has seen him in the 
full career of his success and villany, I think it well, 
even at the cost of some pain and fear, that he should 
see him now.' 

" These few words had been said apart, so as to be in- 
audible to Ohver. The man touched his hat ; and, glan- 
cing at Oliver with some curiosity, opened another gate, 
opposite to that by which they had entered, and led 
them on, through dark and winding ways, towards the 
cells. 

" ' This,' said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage 
where a couple of workmen were making some prepara- 
tions in profound silence, — ' this is the place he passes 
through. If you step this way, you can see the door he 
goes out at. ' 

" He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with cop- 
pers for dressing the prison food, and pointed to a door. 
There was an open grating above it, through which came 
the sound of men's voices, mingled with the noise of 
hammering, and the throwing down of boards. They 
were putting up the scaffold. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 105 

" From this place, they passed through several strong 
gates, opened by other turnkeys from the inner side ; 
and, having entered an open yard, ascended a flight of 
narrow steps, and came into a passage with a row of 
strong doors on the left hand. Motioning them to re- 
main where they were, the turnkey knocked at one of 
these with his bunch of keys. The two attendants, after 
a little whispering, came out into the passage, stretching 
themselves as if glad of the temporary relief, and mo- 
tioned the visitors to follow the jailer into the cell. 
They did so. 

*' The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, 
rocking himself from side to side, with a countenance 
more like that of a snared beast than the face of a man. 
His mind was evidently wandering to his old life ; for he 
continued to mutter, without appearing conscious of 
their presence otherwise than as a part of his vision. 

" ' Good boy, Charley — well done ! ' — he mumbled. 
' Oliver too, — Ha ! ha ! ha ! Oliver too — quite the gen- 
tleman now — quite the — take that boy away to bed ! ' 

" The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver ; and, 
whispering liim not to be alarmed, looked on without 
speaking. 

" ' Take him away to bed I ' cried the Jew. ' Do you 
hear me, some of you ? He has been the — the — some- 
how the cause of all this. It's worth the money to 
bring him up to it — Bolter's throat. Bill; never mind 
the girl — Bolter's throat as deep as you can cut. Saw 
his head off ! ' 



106 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' Fagin,' said the jailer. 

" ' That's me ! ' cried the Jew, falling instantly into 
the attitude of listening he had assumed upon his trial. 
' An old man, my lord, — a very old, old man ! ' 

" ' Here,' said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his 
breast to keep him down. ' Here's somebody wants to 
see you, — to ask you some questions, I suppose. Fagin, 
Fagin ! Are you a man ? ' 

" ' I sha'n't be one long,' replied the Jew, looking up 
with a face retaining no human expression but rage and 
terror. ' Strike them all dead ! what right have they to 
butcher me ? ' 

" As he spoke, he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. 
Brownlow. Shrinking to the farthest corner of the seat, 
he demanded to know what they wanted there. 

" ' Steady, ' said the turnkey, still holding him down. 
' Now, sir, tell him what you want, — quick, if you 
please, for he grows worse as the time gets on.' 

" ' You have some papers,' said Mr. Brownlow, ad- 
vancing, ' which were placed in 'your hands, for better 
security, by a man called Monks.' 

" ' It's all a lie together,' replied the Jew. ' I 
haven't one, — not one.' 

" ' For the love of God,' said Mr. Brownlow solemnly, 
' do not say that now, upon the very verge of death ; but 
tell me where they are. You know that Sykes is dead, 
that Monks has confessed, that there is no hope of any 
further gain. Where are those papers ? ' 



CHARLES DICKENS. 107 

" ' Oliver,' cried the Jew, beckoning to Mm. ' Here, 
here ! Let me whisper to you.' 

" ' I am not afraid,' said Oliver in a loud voice, as he 
relinquished Mr. Brownlow's hand. 

" ' The papers,' said the Jew, drawing him towards 
him, ' are in a canvas bag, in a hole a little way up tlie 
chimney, in the top front room. I want to talk to you, 
my dear. I want to talk to you.' 

" ' Yes, yes,' returned Oliver. * Let me say a prayer. 
Do ! Say only one, upon your knees, with me, and we 
will talk till morning.' 

" ' Outside, outside,' replied the Jew, pushing the boy 
before him towards the door, and looking vacantly over 
his head. ' Say I've gone to sleep : they'll believe you. 
You can get me out if you take me so. Now, then ; 
now, then ! ' 

" ' O God, forgive this wretched man ! ' cried the 
boy with a burst of tears. 

" ' That's right, that's right,' said the Jew. ' That'll 
help us on. This door first. If I shake and tremble, 
as we pass the gallows, don't you mind, but hurry on. 
Now, now, now ! ' 

" ' Have you nothing else to ask him, sir ? ' inquired 
the turnkey. 

" ' No other question,' replied Mr. Brownlow. ' If I 
hoped we could recall him to a sense of his position ' — 

" ' Nothing will do that, sir,' replied the man, shaking 
his head. ' You had better leave him.' 



108 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

" Tlie door of tlie cell opened,, and the attendants re- 
turned. 

" ' Press on, press on ! ' cried the Jew. ' Softly, but 
not so slow. Faster, faster ! ' 

" The men laid hands upon him, and, disengaging 
Oliver from his grasp, held him back. He struggled 
with the power of desperation for an instant, and then 
sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those massive 
walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open 
yard. 

" It was some time before they left the prison. Oliver 
nearly swooned after this frightful scene, and was so 
weak that for an hour or more he had not the strength 
to walk. 

" Day was dawning when they again emerged. A 
great multitude had already assembled: the windows 
were filled with people, smoking, and playing cards, to 
beguile the time. The crowd were pushing, quarrelling, 
and joldng. Every thing told of life and animation, 
but one dark cluster of objects, in the very centre of aH, 
— the black stage, the cross-beam, and the rope, and all 
the hideous apparatus of death." 



CHAPTER V. 



ONE OF HIS BEST. 



Nicholas Nickleby. — Opinion of " The Methodist." — Thackeray's. 
School. — Henry "Ward Beecher's Testimony, 



■The Squeers 



" Have pity on them, for their life 
Is full of grief and care. 
You do not know one-half the woes 

The very poor must bear; 
Tou do not see the silent tears 

By many a mother shed, 
As childhood offers up the prayer, — 
* Give us our daily bread.' " 

Mrs. Jane F. Worthingtox. 

" Hath not Q-od chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the king- 
dom which he hath promised to them that love him." — Jas. ii. 5, 




BOUT the year 1839 was published, in 
shilhng numbers, uniform with " Pick- 
wick," another characteristic novel from 
the pen of Charles Dickens. This was 
entitled Nicholas Nickleby. It became 
very popular abroad, as well as in England, and was 
dramatized in France, as were also several other of his 
works. Thackeray once wrote a laughable account of a 
performance of " Neekolass Neeklbee " which he attended 
in Paris. At present, a French edition of Dickens's novels 
is announced ; and the news of his death was unwelcome 

109 



110 LIFE AND WHITINGS OF 

in foreign lands as well as in " merrie " England. Those, 
in all lands, most familiar with the creations of Mr. Dick-, 
ens's genius, and most capable of appreciating such 
creations, render him a verdict of praise and thanks. 
■ " The Methodist," with wise discrimination, says, — 

" His volumes have reformed some of the most pro- 
found vices of Enghsh life, — the Yorkshire schools, the 
Debtors' Prison, the intolerable grievances of Chancery. 
What defects of British society has he not attempted to 
amehorate ? But, aside from his sarcasm, his humorous 
caricature, the genial method by which he would correct 
grievous evils, he has infused a moral vitality into all 
the veins and arteries of English common life by his 
genial teachings, his boundless illustration of character, 
the habitual humanity and benevolence of his senti- 
ments, and the general high tone of his morality. His 
pages are unsullied with any of that grossness which 
had, down to his day, seemed inseparable from English 
humor. 

" The greatest of the British humorists, — for we do 
not hesitate to accord him this pre-eminence, — he is also 
the purest of them all. Not to speak of Swift and Sterne 
and Fielding and Smollett, he is even less blemished 
than Goldsmith or Addison. He does, indeed, too often 
draw humor from drinldng scenes ; but in this he repre- 
sents the standard sentiment of his countrymen. No 
other taint can be detected by the acutest moral analysis 
of his pages. . . . 



CHARLES DICKEXS. Ill 

" His works can be unreservedly placed in any vir- 
tuous household. They cannot be read by the young 
without neutralizing a taste for lower literature ; with- 
out imparting freshness, healthfulness, geniality, and 
moral tone to the susceptibilities of youth," 

" Nicholas Nickleby " dealt with the abuses in cheap 
Yorkshire schools, at which body and mind were both 
kept on starvation diet, and broke up a system which 
was disgraceful to a civilized country. It showed, as 
did " Oliver Twist," that the author was still working 
for the emancipation of boyhood. He drew from real 
life liis pictures of Dotheboys Hall and the miserable 
Squeers who domineered therein. It was only a humor- 
ous exaggeration, if it was an exaggeration at all, of 
evils really existing which he desired to expose in order 
to correct. And he did correct them. After-years 
showed that he labored not in vain ; so that, in his pref- 
ace to a later edition, he could say of the cheap York- 
shire schools he depicted, " There are very few now." 
The righteous indignation and Christian disgust he felt in 
regard to such miserable substitutes for good schools led 
him to characterize the masters in this forcible lanofuagre. 

" Of the monstrous neglect of education in England, 
and the disregard of it by the State as the means of 
forming good or bad citizens and miserable or happy 
men, private schools long afforded a notable example. 



112 LIFE AND WHITINGS OF 

Although any man, who had proved his unfitness for any- 
other occupation in life, was free, without examination 
or qualification, to open a school anywhere ; although 
preparation for the functions he undertook was required 
in the surgeon who assisted to bring a boy into the 
world, or might one day assist, perhaps, to send him out 
of it; in the chemist, the attorney, the butcher, the 
baker, the candlestick-maker, the whole round of crafts 
and trades, the schoolmaster excepted; and although 
schoolmasters, as a race, were the blockheads and impos- 
tors who might naturally be expected to spring from 
such a state of things, and to flourish in it, — these York- 
shire schoolmasters were the lowest and most rotten 
round in the whole ladder. Traders in the avarice, in- 
difference, imbecility, of parents, and the helplessness of 
children ; ignorant, sordid, brutal men, to whom few 
considerate persons would have intrusted the board and 
lodging of a horse or a dog, — they formed the worthy 
corner-stone of a structure, which, for absurdity and a 
magnificent, high-minded, laissez-aller neglect, has rarely 
been exceeded in the world." 

And solemnly in the preface, Mr. Dickens afiirmed 
that his picture of the Squeers school was a truthful 
one, saying, — 

"The author's object in calling public attention to 
the system would be very imperfectly fidfiUed, if he did 



CHARLES DICKENS. 113 

not state now, in his own person, emphatically and ear- 
nestly, that Mr. S queers and his school are faint and fee- 
ble pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued 
and kept down lest they should be deemed impossible. 
That there are, upon record, trials at law in which dam- 
ages have been sought as a poor recompense for lasting 
agonies and disfigurements inflicted upon children by 
the treatment of the master in these places, involving 
such offensive and foul details of neglect, cruelty, and 
disease, as no writer of fiction would have the boldness 
to imagine. And that, since he has been engaged upon 
these Adventures, he has received, from private quarters 
far beyond the reach of suspicion or distrust, accounts 
of atrocities, in the perpetration of which upon neglected 
or repudiated children these schools have been the main 
instruments, very far. exceeding any that appear in these 
pages. " 

/ Charles Dickens loved children. He wrote for their\ 
good. He may be called the children's friend. The 
brilliant Thackeray, in one of his lectures on " English 
Humorists of the Nineteenth Century, " paid an eloquent 
and touching tribute to the pure genius of Dickens, and 

, in it referred thus to Mm and to " Nicholas Nickleby." 

" As for this man's love of children, that amiable or- 
gan at the back of his honest head must be perfectly 
monstrous. All children ought to love him. I know 

8 



114 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

• 

two that do, and read his books ten times for once that 
they perase the dismal preachments of their father. I 
know one who, when she is happy, reads ' Nicholas Nic- 
kleby ; ' when she is unhappy, reads ' Nicholas Nickleby ; ' 
when she is tired, reads ' Nicholas Nickleby ; ' when she 
is in bed, reads ' Nicholas Nickleby ; ' when she has noth- 
ing to do, reads ' Nicholas Nickleby ; ' and, when she has 
finished the book, reads ' Nicholas Nickleby ' over again. 
This candid young critic, at ten years of age, said, ' I 
like Mr. Dickens's books much better than I do your 
books, papa ; ' and frequently expressed her desire that 
the latter author should write a book like one of Mr. 
Dickens's books. Who can ? Every man must say his 
own thoughts in his own voice, in his own way : lucky 
is he v/ho has such a charming gift of nature as this, 
which brings all the children in the world trooping to 
him and being fond of him. 

" I remember, when the famous ' Nicholas Nickleby ' 
came out, seeing a letter from a pedagogue in the north 
of England, which, dismal as it was, was immensely com- 
ical. ' Mr. Dickens's ill-advised publication,' wrote the 
poor schoolmaster, ' has passed like a whirlwind over the 
schools of the north.' He was the proprietor of a cheap 
school. Dotheboys Hall was a cheap school. There 
were many such establishments in the northern coun- 
ties. Parents were ashamed that never were ashamed 
before until the kind satirist laughed at them ; relatives 
were frightened ; scores of little scholars were taken 



CHAHLES DICKENS. 115 

awa}^ ; poor schoolmasters had to shut their shops up ; 
every pedagogue was voted a Squeers, and many suf- 
fered, no doubt, unjustly ; but afterwards school-boys' 
backs were not so much caned, school-boys' meat was 
less tough and more plentiful, and school-boys' milk 
was not so sky-blue. What a kind light of benevolence 
it is that plays round Crummies and the Phenomenon, 
and all those poor theatre people in that charming book ! 
What a humor ! And what a good humor ! I coincide 
with the youthful critic whose opinion has just been 
mentioned, and own to a family admiration for Nicholas 
Nickleby. " 

'\ 
Tliis side the water, the great Brooklyn preacher J\ 
whom all Christians love, bore this testimony concern-' 
ing Mr. Dickens and his book : — 

" Many ameliorations of bad laws and cruel customs 
can be traced to the influence of his pen. I remember 
his sa3dng to me in the room adjoining, in a modest 
wa}^ that since his account of Mr. Squeers's school, in 
which Nicholas Nickleby was not educated, such schools 
had passed away from England. His writings led the 
way to many reforms, and made many abuses ashamed." 

No one who has read " Nicholas Nickleby " can fail 
to remember the description of Mr. Squeers, or to de- 
spise the Yorkshire schoolmaster thus described : — 



116 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" Mr. Squeers's appearance was not prepossessing. 
He had but one eye ; and the popular prejudice runs in 
favor of two. The eye he had was unquestionably 
useful, but decidedly not ornamental ; being of a green- 
ish gray, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a 
street-door. The blank side of his face was much wrin- 
kled and puckered up, which gave him a very sinister 
appearance, especially when he smiled ; at which times 
liis expression bordered closely on the villanous. His 
hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it 
was brushed stiffly up from a low, protruding forehead, 
which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse 
manner. He was about two or three and fifty, and a 
trifle below the middle size. He wore a Avhite necker- 
chief with long ends, and a suit of scholastic black ; but 
his coat-sleeves being a great deal too long, and his 
trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in 
his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of 
astonishment at finding himself so respectable. 

'' Mr. Squeers was standing in a box by one of the 
coffee-room fireplaces, fitted with one such table as is 
usually seen in coffee-rooms, and two of extraordinary 
shapes and dimensions, made to suit the angles of the 
partition. In a corner of the seat was a very small deal 
trunk, tied round with a scanty piece of cord ; and on 
the trunk was perched — his lace-up half-boots and cor- 
duroy trousers dangling in the air — a diminutive boy, 
with shoulders drawn up to his ears, and his hands 



CHAKLES DICKENS. 117 

planted on his knees, who glanced timidly at the school- 
master from time to time, with evident dread and ap- 
prehension. 

" ' Half-past three,' muttered Mr. Squeers, turning 
from the window, and looking sulkily at the coffee-room 
clock. ' There will be nobody here to-day.' 

" Much vexed by this reflection, Mr. Squeers looked 
at the little boy to see whether he was doing any thing 
he could beat him for. As he happened not to be doing 
any thing at all, he merely boxed his ears, and told him 
not to do it again. 

" ' At midsummer,' muttered Mr. Squeers, resuming 
'his complaint, ' I took down ten boys : ten twenty s is 
two hundred pound. I go back at eight o'clock to- 
morrow morning, and have got only three, — three 
oughts is an ought, three twos is six, — sixty pound. 
What's come of all the boys? What's parents got in 
their heg-ds ? What does it all mean ? ' 

" Here the little boy on the top of the trunk gave a 
violent sneeze. 

" ' Holloa, sir ! ' growled the schoolmaster, turning 
round. ' What's that, sir ? ' 

" ' Nothing, please, sir,' said the little boy. 

" ' Nothing, sir ! ' exclaimed Mr. Squeers. 

" ' Please, sir, I sneezed,' rejoined the boy, trembling 
till the little trunk shook under him. 

" ' Oh !, sneezed, did you ? ' retorted Mr. Squeers. 
' Then what did you say, " Nothing " for, sir ? ' 



118 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" In default of a better answer to this question, the 
little boy screwed a couple of knucldes into each of his 
ejes, and began to cry ; wherefore Mr. Squeers knocked 
him off the trunk with a blow on one side of his face, 
and knocked him on again with a blow on the other. 

" ' Wait till I get you down into Yorkshire, my young 
gentleman,' said Mr. Squeers, ' and then I'll give you the 
rest. Will you hold that noise, sir ? ' 

" ' Ye-ye-yes,' sobbed the little boy, rubbing his face 
very hard with the ' Beggar's Petition ' in printed calico. 

" ' Then do so at once, sir,' said Squeers. ' Do 3^ou 
hear ? ' 

" As this admonition was accompanied with a threat- 
ening gesture, and uttered with a savage asj)ect, the 
little boy rubbed his face harder, as if to keep the tears 
back, and, beyond alternately sniffing and choking, gave 
no further vent to his emotions. 

" ' Mr. Squeers,' said the waiter, looking in at this 
juncture, ' here's a gentleman asking for you at the bar.' 

" ' Show the gentleman in, Richard,' replied Mr. 
Squeers in a soft voice. ' Put your handkerchief in 
your pocket, you little scoundrel, or I'll murder you 
when the gentleman goes.' 

" The schoolmaster had scarcely uttered these words 
in a fierce whisper, when the stranger entered. Affect- 
ing not to see him, Mr. Squeers feigned to be intent 
upon mending a pen, and offering benevolent ^vice to 
his yo.uthful pupil. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 119 

" ' My dear child,' said Mr. Squeers, ' all people have 
their trials. This early trial of yours, that is fit to make 
your little heart burst, and your very eyes come out of 
your head with crying, what is it ? Nothing, less than 
nothing. You are leaving your friends ; but you will have 
a father in me, my dear, and a mother in Mrs. Squeers. 
At the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta 
Bridge, in Yorkshire, where youth are boarded, clothed, 
booked, washed, furnished with pocket-money, provided 
with all necessaries " — 

" ' It is the gentleman,' observed the stranger, stop- 
ping the schoolmaster in the rehearsal of his advertise- 
ment. ' Mr. Squeers, I believe, sir ? ' 

" ' The same, sir,' said Mr. Squeers, with an assump- 
tion of extreme surprise. 

" ' The gentleman,' said the stranger, ' that advertised 
in " The Times " newspaper ? ' 

— " ' " Morning Post," " Chronicle," " Herald," and 
'' Advertiser," regarding the Academy called Dotheboys 
Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta 
Bridge, in Yorkshire,' added Mr. Squeers. ' You come on 
business, sk, I see by my young friends. How do you 
do, my little gentleman ? and how do ^ou do, sir ? ' 
With this salutation, Mr. Squeers patted the heads of two 
hollow-eyed, small-boned little boys, whom the appli- 
cant had brought with him, and waited for fiu-ther com- 
munications." 



120 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

After such a description of the master, what may be 
expected as a picture of the school ? The introduction 
which Nicholas Nickleby had to the young noblemen 
of Dotheboys Hall, and the manner in which they were 
treated in regard to food and medicine, gives the answer. 
Mr. Squeers led Nicholas to the schoolroom, saying, 

" ' This is our shop, Nickleby.' 

"It was such a crowded scene, and there were so 
many objects to attract attention, that, at first, Nicholas 
stared about him, really without seeing any thing at all. 
By degrees, however, the place resolved itself into a 
bare and dirty room, with a couple of windows, whereof 
a tenth part might be of glass, the remainder being 
stopped up with old copybooks and paper. There were 
a couple of long, old, rickety desks, cut and notched 
and inked, and damaged in every possible way ; two or 
three forms ; a detached desk for Squeers, and another 
for his assistant. The ceiling was supported, like that 
of a barn, by cross-beams and rafters ; and the walls 
were so stained and discolored that it was impossible to 
tell whether they had ever been touched with paint or 
whitewash. 

" But the pupils, — the young noblemen ! How the 
last faint traces of hope, the remotest glimmering of any 
good to be derived from his efforts in this den, faded 
from the mind of Nicholas as he looked in dismay 
around ! Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony fig- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 121 

ures, children with the countenances of old men, de- 
formities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted 
growth, and others whose long, meagre legs would 
hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the 
view together. There were the bleared eye, the hair-lip, 
the crooked foot, and every ugliness or distortion that 
told of unnatural aversion conceived by parents for their 
offspring, or of young lives which, from the earliest 
dawn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance of 
cruelty and neglect ; there were little faces which 
should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl 
of sullen, dogged suffering ; there was childhood, with 
the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its 
helplessness alone remaining ; there were vicious-faced 
boys, brooding, with leaden eyes, like malefactors in a 
jail ; and there were young creatures, on whom the sins 
of their frail j^arents had descended, weeping even for 
the mercenary nurses they had known, and lonesome 
even in their loneliness. With every kindly sympathy 
and affection blasted in its birth, with every young and 
healthy feeling flogged and starved down, with every 
revengeful passion that can fester in swollen hearts eat- 
ing its evil way to their core in silence, what an incipient 
hell was breediuGf here ! 

'' And yet this scene, painful as it Avas, had its gro- 
tesque features, which, in a less interested observer than 
Nicholas, might have provoked a smile. Mrs. Squeers 
stood at one of the desks, presiding over an immense 



122 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

basin of brimstone and treacle, of which delicious com- 
pound she administered a large instalment to each boy 
in succession, using for the purpose a common wooden 
spoon, which might have been originally manufactured 
for some gigantic top, and which widened every young 
gentleman's mouth considerably ; they being all obliged, 
under heavy corporal penalties, to take in the whole of 
the bowl at a gasp. In another corner, huddled to- 
gether for companionship, were the little boys who had 
arrived on the preceding night, — three of them in very 
large leather breeches, and two in old trousers, a some- 
what tighter fit than drawers are usually worn. At no 
great distance from these was seated the juvenile son 
and heir of Mr. Squeers, — a strildng likeness of his 
father, — kicking, with great vigor, under the hands of 
Smike, who was fitting upon him a pair of new boots 
that bore a most suspicious resemblance to those which 
the least of the little boys had worn on the journey 
down, as the little boy himself seemed to think, for 
he was regarding the appropriation with a look of most 
rueful amazement. Besides these, there was a long row 
of boys waiting, with countenances of no pleasant anti- 
cipation, to be treacled ; and another file, who had just 
escaped from the infliction, making a variety of wry 
mouths indicative of any thing but satisfaction. The 
wliole were attired in such motley, ill-sorted, extraordi- 
nary garments, as would have been irresistibly ridicu- 
lous, but for the foul appearance of dirt, disorder, and 
disease, with which they were associated. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 123 

" ' Now,' said Squeers, giving the desk a great rap 
with his cane, which made half the Httle boys nearly 
jump out of their boots, ' is that physicking over ? ' 

" ' Just over,' said Mrs. Squeers, choking the last boy 
in her hurr}^, and tapping the crown of his head with 
the wooden spoon to restore him. ' Here, you Smike ! 
take away now. Look sharp ! ' 

" Smike shuffled out with the basin; and Mrs. Squeers, 
having called up a little boy with a curly head, and 
wiped her hands upon it, hurried out after him into a 
species of wash-house, where there was a small fire, and 
a large kettle, together with a number of little wooden 
bowls which were arranged upon a board. 

" Into these bowls, Mrs. Squeers, assisted by the hun- 
gry servant, poured a brown composition, which looked 
like diluted pincushions without the covers, and was 
called porridge. A minute wedge of brown bread was 
inserted in each bowl ; and, when they had eaten their 
porridge by means of the bread, the boys ate the bread 
itself, and had finished their breakfast : whereupon Mr. 
Squeers said, in a solemn voice, ' For what we have re- 
ceived, may the Lord make us truly thankful ! ' — and 
went away to his own. 

" Nicholas distended his stomach with a bowl of por- 
ridge, for much the same reason which induces some 
savages to swallow earth, — lest they should be incon- 
veniently hungry Avhen there is nothing to eat. Having 
further disposed of a slice of bread and butter, allotted 



124 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

to liim ill virtue of liis office, he sat himself down to 
wait for school-time. 

" He could not but observe how silent and sad the 
boys all seemed to be. There was none of the noise 
and clamor of a school-room ; none of its boisterous 
play or hearty mirth. The children sat crouching and 
shivering together, and seemed to lack the spirit to move 
about. The only pupil who evinced the slightest ten- 
dency towards locomotion or playfulness was Master 
Squeers ; and, as his chief amusement was to tread upon 
the other boys' toes in his new boots, his flow of spirits 
was rather disagreeable than otherwise. 

"After some half-hour's delay, Mr. Squeers re-ap- 
peared ; and the boys took their places and their books, 
of which latter commodity the average might be about 
one to eight learners. A few minutes having elapsed, 
during which Mr. Squeers looked very profound, as if 
he had a perfect apprehension of what was inside all the 
books, and could say every word of their contents by 
heart if he only chose to take the trouble, that gentle- 
man called up the first class. 

" Obedient to this summons, there ranged themselves 
in front of the schoolmaster's desk half a dozen scare- 
crows, out at knees and elbows ; one of whom placed a 
torn and filthy book beneath his learned eye. 

" ' This is the first class in English spelling and phi- 
losophy, Nickleby,' said Squeers, beckoning Nicholas to 
stand beside liim. 'We'll get up a Latin one, and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 125 

hand that over to you. Now, then, where's the first 
boy?' 

" ' Please, sir, he's cleaning the back-parlor window,' 
said the temporary head of the philosophical class. 

'"So he is, to be sure,' rejoined Squeers. ' We go 
upon the practical mode of teaching, Nickleby ; the 
regular education system. C-1-e-a-n, clean, verb active, 
to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, winder, 
a casement. When the boy knows this out of book, he 
goes and does it. It's just the same principle as the use 
of the globes. Where's the second boy ? ' 

" ' Please, sir, he's weeding the garden,' rejDlied a 
small voice. 

" ' To be sure,' said Squeers, by no means discon- 
certed : ' so he is. B-o-t, bot, t-i-n, tin, bottin, n-e-y, 
ney, bottinney, noun substantive, a knowledge of plants. 
When he has learned that bottinney means a knowledge 
of plants, he goes and knows 'em. That's our system, 
Nicideby : what do you think of it ? ' 

" ' It's a very useful one, at any rate,' ansAvered 
Nicholas. 

" ' I believe you,' rejoined Squeers, not remarking 
the emphasis of his usher. ' Third boy. What's a 
horse ? ' 

" ' A beast, sir,' replied the boy. 

" ' So it is,' said Squeers. ' Ain't it, Nickleby ? ' 

" ' I believe there is no doubt of that, sir,' answered 
Nicholas. 



12G LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' Of course, there isn't,' said Squeers. ' A horse is 
a quadruped, and quadruped's Latin for beast, as every- 
body that's gone through the grammar knows ; or else 
Where's the use of having^ o^rammars at all ? ' 

" ' Where, indeed ! ' said Nicholas abstractedly. 

"'As you're perfect in that,' resumed Squeers, turn- 
ing to the boy, ' go and look after my horse, and rub him 
down well, or I'll rub you doAvn. The rest of the class 
go and draw water up till somebody tells you to leave 
off; for it's washing-day to-morrow, and they want the 
coppers filled.' 

"So saying, he dismissed the first class to their ex- 
periments in practical philosoph}^, and eyed Nicholas 
with a look, half- cunning and half- doubtful, as if he 
were not altogether certain what he might think of him 
by this time. 

" ' That's the way we do it, Nickleby,' he said after a 
pause. 

" Nicholas shrugged his shoulders in a manner that 
was scarcely perceptible, and said he saw it was. 

" ' And a very good way it is too,' said Squeers. 
' Now, just take them fourteen little boys, and hear 
them some reading, because, you know, you must begin 
to be useful. Idling about here won't do.' 

" Mr. Squeers said this as if it had suddenly occurred 
to him, either that he must not say too much to his as- 
sistant, or that his assistant did not say enough to him 
in praise of the establishment. The children were ar- 



CFTARLES DICKENS. 127 

ranged in a semicircle round the new master ; and lie 
was soon listening to their dull, drawling, hesitating re- 
cital of those stories of engrossing interest which are to 
be found in the more antiquated spelling-books. 

" In this exciting occupation the morning lagged 
heavily on. At one o'clock, the boys, having previously 
had their appetites thoroughly taken away by stir-about 
and potatoes, sat down in the Idtchen to some hard salt- 
beef, of which Nicholas was graciously permitted to 
take his portion to his own solitary desk to eat it there 
in peace. After this, there was another hour of crouch- 
ing in the school-room, and shivering with cold; and 
then school began again." 

In connection with Nicholas, the poor drudge, Smike, 
is always remembered. That he was the cousin of 
Nicholas is afterwards shown ; but neither of them 
dreamed of the relationship while they were together. 
Not until Smike found the friendly shelter of the grave 
did the lono^-hidden secret become revealed. The fol- 
lowing is the account of their first conversation : — 

" As he was absorbed in these meditations, he all at 
once encountered the upturned face of Smike, who was 
on his knees before the stove, picking a few stray cin- 
ders from the hearth, and planting them on the fire. 
He had paused to steal a look at Nicholas, and, when he 
saw that he was observed, shrunk back, as if expecting 
a blow. 



128 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' You need not fear me,' said Nicholas kindly. 
' Are you cold ? ' 

u 4 N-n-o.' 

" ' You are shivering.' 

" ' I am not cold,' replied Smike quickly. ' I am 
used to it.' 

" There was such an obvious fear of giving offence in 
his manner, and he was such a timid, broken-spirited 
creature, that Nicholas could not help exclaiming, ' Poor 
fellow ! ' 

'' If he had struck the drudge, he would have slunk 
away without a word. But now he burst into tears. 

" ' Oh, dear, oh, dear ! ' he cried, covering his face 
with his cracked and horny hands. ' My heart will 
break. It will, it will.' 

" ' Hush ! ' said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his 
shoulder. ' Be a man ! you are nearly one by years, 
God help you ! ' 

" ' By years I ' cried Smike. ' Oh, dear, dear, how 
many of them ! How many of them since I was a little 
child, younger than any that are here now ! Where are 
they all?' 

" ' Whom do you speak of ? ' inquired Nicholas, wish- 
ing to rouse the poor, half-witted creature to reason ; 
' Tell me. ' 

" ' My friends,' he replied, ' myself — my — oh ! what 
sufferings mine have been ! ' 

" ' There is always hope,' said Nicholas : he knew not 
what to say. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 129 

" ' No,' rejoined the other. ' No : none for me.' Do 
you remember the boy that died here ? ' 

" ' I was not here, you know,' said Nicholas gently ; 
' but what of him ? ' 

" ' Why,' replied the youth, drawing closer to liis 
questioner's side, ' I was with him at night ; and, when 
it was all silent, he cried no more for friends he wished to 
come and sit with him, but began to see faces round his 
bed that came from home. He said they smiled, and 
talked to him ; and he died, at last, lifting his head to kiss 
them. Do you hear ! ' 

" ' Yes, yes,' rejoined Nicholas. 

" ' What faces will smile on me when I die ! ' cried 
his companion, shivering. 'Who will talk to me in 
those long nights ! They cannot come from home : they 
would frighten me, if they did, for I don't know what it 
is, and shouldn't know them. Pain and fear, pain and 
fear, for me, alive or dead. No hope, no hope ! ' 

" The bell rang to bed ; and the boy, subsiding at the 
sound into his own listless state, crept away as if anxious 
to avoid notice. It was with a heavy heart that Nicho- 
las soon afterwards — no, not retired ; there was no re- 
tirement, there — followed — to his dirty and crowded 
dormitory." 

Nicholas proved the friend of the friendless boy. 
Their adventures to<xether served to interest them still 
more deeply in each other ; and, when poor Smike passed 



130 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

on to the other life, his faithful cousin was found near 
him to smooth his dying pillow. For Smike's health, 
the two friends went into the country ; and then Mr. 
Dickens says, — 

" They procured a humble lodging in a small farm- 
house, surrounded by meadows, where Nicholas had 
often revelled, when a child, with a troop of merry 
schoolfellows ; and here they took up their rest. 

'' At first, Smike was strong enough to walk about, 
for short distances at a time, with no other support or 
aid than that which Nicholas could afford him. At this 
time, nothing appeared to interest him so much as visit- 
ing those places which had been most familiar to his 
friend in bygone days. Yielding to this fancy, and 
pleased to find that its indulgence beguiled the sick boy 
of many tedious hours, and never failed to afford him 
matter for thought and conversation afterwards, Nicho- 
las made such spots the scenes of their daily rambles ; 
driving him from place to place in a little pony-chair, 
and supporting him on his arm while they walked slowly 
among these old haunts, or lingered in the sunlight to 
take long parting looks of those which were most quiet 
and beautiful. 

" It was on such occasions as these, that Nicholas, 
yielding almost unconsciously to the interest of old 
associations, would point out some tree that he had 
climbed a hundred times to peep at the young birds 



CHARLES DICKENS. 131 

ill theii* nest, and the branch from which he used to 
shout to httle Kate, who stood below, terrified at the 
height he had gained, and yet urging him higlier still 
by the intensity of her admiration. There was the old 
house, too, which they would pass every day, looking 
up at the tiny window through which the sun used to 
stream in, and wake him on the summer mornings 
(they were all summer mornings then) ; and climbing 
up the garden-wall, and looking over, Nicholas could see 
the very rose-bush which had come, a present to Kate, 
from some little lover, and she had planted with her 
own hands. There were the hedgerows where the 
brother and sister had often gathered wild-flowers to- 
gether, and the green fields and shady paths where they 
had often strayed. There was not a lane or brook or 
copse or cottage near, with which some childish event 
was not intwinecl ; and back it came upon the mind 
(as events of childhood do), nothing in itself, — perhaps 
a word, a laugh, a look, some slight distress, a passing 
thought or fear, — and yet more strongly and distinctly 
marked, and better remembered, than the hardest trials 
or severest sorrows of a year ago. 

" One of these expeditions led them through the 
churchyard where was his father's grave. ' Even here,' 
said Nicholas softly, ' we used to loiter before we knew 
what death was, and when we little thought whose 
ashes would rest beneath, and, wondering at the 
silence, sit down to rest, and speak below our breath. 



132 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

Once Kate was lost; and, after an hour of fruitless 
search, they found her fast asleep under that tree which 
shades my father's grave. He was very fond of her, and 
said when he took her up in his arms, still sleeping, that, 
whenever he died, he would wish to be buried where 
his dear little child had laid her head. You see his wish 
was not forgotten.' 

" Nothing more passed at the time ; but that night, 
as Nicholas sat beside his bed, Smike started from what 
had seemed to be a slumber, and, laying his hand in his, 
prayed, as the tears coursed down his face, that he would 
make him one solemn promise. 

"'What is that?' said Nicholas kindly. 'If I can 
redeem it, or hope to do so, you know I will.' 

" ' I am sure you will,' was the reply. ' Promise me, 
that, when I die, I shall be buried near — as near as 
they can make my grave — to the tree we saw to-day.' 

" Nicholas gave the promise. He had few words to 
give it in ; but they were solemn and earnest. His poor 
friend kept his hand in his, and turned as if to sleep. 
But there were stifled sobs ; and the hand was pressed 
more than once or twice or thrice before he sank tc 
rest, and slowly loosed his hold. 

" In a fortnight's time, he became too ill to move 
about. Once or twice, Nicholas drove him out, propped 
up with pillows ; but the motion of the chaise was 
painful to him, and brought on fits of fainting, which, 
in his weakened state, were dangerous. There was an 



CHARLES DICKENS. 133 

old conch in the honse, which was his favorite resting- 
place by day: when the sun shone, and the weather 
was warm, Nicholas had this wheeled into a little or- 
chard which was close at hand ; and his charge being 
well wrapped up, and carried out to it, they used to sit 
there sometimes for hours together. 

" It was on one of these occasions that a "circumstance 
took place, which Nicholas, at the time, thoroughly be- 
lieved to be the mere delusion of an imagination affected 
by disease, but which he had afterwards too good reason 
to know was of real and actual occurrence. 

"He had brought Smike out in his arms — poor fel- 
low ! a child might have carried him then — to see the 
sunset, and, having arranged his couch, had taken his 
seat beside it. He had been watching the whole of the 
night before, and, being greatly fatigued both in mind 
and body, gradually fell asleep. 

"He could not have closed his eyes five minutes, 
when he was awakened by a scream, and, starting up in 
that kind of terror which affects a person suddenly 
roused, saw, to his great astonishment, that his charge 
had struggled into a sitting posture, and with eyes al- 
most starting from their sockets, cold dew standing on 
his forehead, and, in a fit of trembling which quite con- 
vulsed his frame, was calling to him for help. 

" ' Good heaven ! what is this ? " said Nicholas, bend- 
ing over him. " Be calm : you have been dreaming." 

" ' No, no, no ! ' cried Smike, clinging to him. ' Hold 



134 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

me tight. Don't let me go. There, there ! Behind 
the tree ! 

" Nicholas followed his eyes, which were directed 
to some distance behind the chair from which he him- 
self had just risen. But there was nothing there. 

" ' This is nothing but your fancy,' he said, as he 
strove to compose him : ' nothing else indeed.' 

" ' I know better. I saw as plain as I see now,' was 
the answer. ' Oh, say you'll keep me with you ! Swear 
you won't leave me, for an instant ! ' 

" ' Do I ever leave you ? ' returned Nicholas. ' Lie 
down again : there ! You see I'm here. Now, tell me, 
what was it ? ' 

" ' Do you remember,' said Smike in a low voice, and 
glancing fearfully round, — ' do you remember my telling 
you of the man who firet took me to the school ? ' 

" ' Yes, surely.' 

"'I raised my eyes, just now, towards that tree, — 
that one with the thick trunk, — and there, with his eyes 
fixed on me, he stood ! ' 

" ' Only reflect for one moment,' said Nicholas. 
' Granting, for an instant, that it's likely he is alive and 
wandermg about a lonely place like this, so far re- 
moved from the public road, do you think, that, at this 
distance of time, you could possibly know that man 
again ? ' 

" ' Anywhere, — in any dress,' returned Smike ; ' but, 
just now, he stood leaning upon his stick and looldng 



CHARLES DICKENS. 135 

at me, exactly as I told yon I remembered him. He 
was dusty with walking, and poorly dressed, — I think 
his clothes were ragged ; but, directly I saw him, the 
wet night, his face when he left me, the parlor I was 
left in, the people who were there, — all seemed to come 
back together. When he knew I saw him, he looked 
frightened ; for he started, and shrank away. I have 
thought of him by day, and dreamt of liim by night. 
He looked in my sleep when I was quite a little child, 
and has looked in my sleep ever since, as he did just now." 
" Nicholas endeavored, by every persuasion and argu- 
ment he could think of, to convince the terrified creature 
that his imagination had deceived him, and that this 
close resemblance between the creation of his di^eams 
and the man he supposed he had seen was a proof of it ; 
but all in vain. When he could persuade him to remain, 
for a few moments, in the ca^e of the people to whom 
the house belonged, he instituted a strict inquiry whether 
any stranger had been seen, and searched, himself, behind 
the tree, and through the orchard, and upon the land 
immediately adjoining, and in every place near, where 
it was possible for a man to lie concealed ; but all in 
vain. Satisfied that he was right in his original con- 
jecture, he applied himself to calming the fears of 
Smike : which, after some time, he partially succeeded, 
in doing, though not in removing the impression upon 
his mind ; for he still declared, again and again, in the 
most solemn and fervid manner, that he had positively 



136 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

seen what he had described, and that nothing could 
ever remove his conviction of its reahty. 

'' And now Nicholas began to see that hope was gone, 
and that upon the partner of his poverty and the sharer 
of his better fortune the world was closing fast. There 
was little pain, little uneasiness ; but there v/as no rally- 
ing, no effort, no struggle for life. He was worn and 
wasted to the last degree ; his voice had sunk so low 
that he could scarce be heard to speak ; nature was 
thoroughly exhausted, and he had lain him down to die. 

" On a fine, mild, autumn day, when all was tranquil 
and at peace, when the soft, sweet air crept in at the open 
window of the quiet room, and not a sound was heard 
but the gentle rustling of the leaves, Nicholas sat in 
his old place by the bedside, and knew that the time was 
nearly come. So very still it was, that, every now and 
then, he bent down his ear to listen for the breathing of 
him who lay asleep, as if to assure himself that life was 
still there, and that he had not fallen into that deep 
slumber from which on earth there is no waking. 

" While he was thus employed, the closed eyes opened, 
and on the pale face there came a placid smile. 

" ' That's well,' said Nicholas. ' The sleep has done 
you good.' 

" ' I have had such pleasant dreams ! ' was the answer, 
— " such pleasant, happy dreams ! ' 

" ' Of what? ' said Nicholas. 

" The dying boy turned towards him, and, putting his 



CHARLES DICKENS. 137 

arm about his neck, made answer, ' I shall soon be 
there ! ' 

" After a short silence he spoke again. 

" ' I am not afraid to die,' he said : ' I am quite con- 
tented. I almost think, that, if I could rise from this 
bed quite well, I would not wish to do so now. You 
have so often told me we shall meet again, — so very 
often, lately, — and now I feel the truth of that so 
strongly, that I can even bear to part from you.' 

" The trembling voice and tearful eye, and the closer 
grasp of the arm, which accompanied these latter words, 
showed how they filled the speaker's heart ; nor were 
there wanting indications of how deeply they had 
touched the heart of him to whom they were ad- 
dressed. 

" ' You say well,' returned Nicholas at length, ' and 
comfort me very much, dear fellow. Let me hear you 
say you are happy, if you can.' 

" ' You must tell me something first. I should not 
have a secret from you. You will not blame me at a 
time like this, I know." 

" ' J blame you ! ' exclaimed Nicholas. 

" ' I am sure you will not. You asked me why I was 
so changed, and — and sat so much alone. Shall I tell 
you why ? ' 

" ' Not if it pains you,' said Nicholas. ' I only asked, 
that I might make you happier if I could.' 

'' ' I know. I felt that at the time.' He drew his 



138 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

friend closer to him. ' You will forgive me : I could not 
help it ; Lut, though I would have died to make her 
happy, it broke my heart to see — I know he loves her 
dearly — oh ! who could find that out so goon as I ? ' 

"'The words which followed were feebly and faintly 
uttered, and broken by long pauses ; but from them 
Nicholas learned, for the first time, that the dying boy, 
with all the ardor of a nature concentrated on one 
absorbing, hopeless, secret passion, loved his sister 
Kate. 

" He had procured a lock of her hair, Avhich hung at 
his breast, folded in one or two slight ribbons she had 
worn. He prayed, that, when he Avas dead, Nicholas 
would take it off, so that no eyes but his might see it, 
and that, when he was laid in his coffin and about to be 
placed in the earth, he would hang it round his neck 
again, that it might rest with him in the grave. 

" Upon his knees, Nicholas gave him this pledge, and 
promised again that he should rest in the spot he had 
pointed out. They embraced, and kissed each other on 
the cheek. 

" ' Now,' he murmured, ' I am happy.' 

" He fell into a light slumber, and, Avaking, smiled as 
before : then spoke of beautiful gardens, which he said 
stretched out before him, and were filled with figures 
of men, women, and many children, all with light upon 
their faces ; then whispered that it was Eden ; and so 
died." 



CHARLES DICKENS. 139 

From these extracts it may be seen, that, as a writer 
in " The Edinburgh Review " says, — 

" There is no misanthropy in his satire, and no coarse- 
ness in his descriptions, — a merit enhanced by the na- 
ture of his subjects. His works are chiefly pictures of 
humble life, — frequently of the humblest. The reader 
is led through scenes of poverty and crime, and all the 
characters are made to discourse in the appropriate lan- 
guage of their respective classes ; and yet we recollect 
no passage which ought to cause pain to the most sensi- 
tive delicac}^, if read aloud in female society. We have 
said that his satire was not misanthropic. This is emi- 
nently true. One of the qualities we the most admire 
in him is his comprehensive spirit of humanity. The 
tendency of his writings is to make ns practically be- 
nevolent ; to excite our sympathy in behalf of the 
aggrieved and suffering in all classes, and especially 
in those who are most removed from observation. He 
especially directs our attention to the helpless victims 
of untoward circumstances or a vicious system, — to the 
imprisoned debtor, the orphan pauper, the parish ap- 
prentice, the juvenile criminal, and to the tyranny, 
which, under the combination of parental neglect with 
the mercenary brutality of a pedagogue, may be exer- 
cised with impunity in schools. His humanity is plain, 
practical, and manly. It is quite untainted with senti- 
me.ntalitv. There is no monkish wailinu: for ideal dis- 



140 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

tresses ; no morbid exaggeration of the evils incident to 
our lot ; no disposition to excite unavailing discontent, 
or to turn our attention from remedial grievances to 
those which do not admit a remedy. Though he ap- 
peals much to our feelings, we can detect no instance in 
which he has employed the verbiage of a spurious phi- 
lanthropy. He is equally exempt from the meretricious 
cant of a spurious philosophy." * 

* Edinburgh Review, Ixviii. 77, October, 1838. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OTHER NOVELS. 



Master Humphrey's Clock. — London Years Ago. — Country Picture. — Barnaby 
Rudge. — Old Curiosity Shop. — Death of Little Nell. — Mr. Dickens's Speech. — 
Funeral of Little Nell. — Landor's Testimony. — Child Pictures from Dickens. — 
Memoirs of Grrimaldi. 

" A blessing on the pi'inter's art I 
Books are the Mentors of the heart." 

Mrs. Hajle. 

"Of making many books there is no end." — Eccles. xii. 12. 



HE busy pen moved on. After " Nicliolas 
Nickleby " came a series of tales, or nov- 
els, published in weekly numbers, under 
the general title of " Master Humphrey's 
Clock." In this series, '' Barnaby Rudge " 
and " The Old Curiosity Shop " appeared. It was in 
April, 1840, that the first number of this serial was 
written. The thirty years which have since passed have 
only added to the author's reputation, which was even 
then so far established, that, of the three-penny num- 
bers containing his "Master Humx^hrey's Clock," there 
were no less than forty thousand copies when first is- 
sued; and to this were soon added twenty thousand 

141 




142 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

more. Yet the work, as first designed, was not a de- 
cided success. It failed to meet the demand of the 
public, which desired the long stories, and not frag- 
ments. Therefore Mr. Dickens wrote " The Old Curi- 
osity Shop," and " Barnaby Rudge;" which are novels 
purely, and not, like his previous stories, righteous as- 
saults on abuses and social wrongs. The latter, as one 
biographer says, " is one of his two historical novels, 
and shows a respectable degree of power in that depart- 
ment of fiction. But Mr. Dickens's peculiar gift, and 
his best gift, was not the accumulation and delineation 
of such items as paint a past period, — costume, anti- 
quarian lexicography, archseology generally. These are 
transitory, and are already dead. There have been great 
masters in the art of grouping and painting them, no 
doubt. But the art of this master was in painting the 
qualities of humanity, not of its costume ; the feelings, 
sentiments, and passions, that are everlasting as man. 
It might, therefore, have been expected that this part 
of the work would usurp upon the other in the compo- 
sition of historical fiction ; and so it was accordingly. 
The ignoblenesses of Miggs and Tappertit ; the brutali- 
ties of Dennis and Hugh ; the gross, stolid obstinacy of 
old Willetts ; the steadfast goodness of Varden ; the 
bright, loving sweetness of Dolly; the misery of the 
Widow Rudge ; the fantastic, innocent vagaries of her 
crack-brained darling ; and we may, perhaps, add to 
this catalogue of human qualities those which Grip, the 



CHARLES DICKENS. 143 

raven, had acquired from human teaching, — these are 
the staple of the story." 

From " Barnaby Rudge " a few extracts may properly 
here be given. The first gives a graphic picture of Lon- 
don in days gone by, wherein Dickens says, — 

" A series of pictures representing the streets of Lon- 
don in the night, even at the comparatively recent date 
of this tale, would present to the eye something so very 
different in character from the reality which is witnessed 
in these times, that it would be difficult for the beholder 
to recognize his most familiar walks in the altered aspect 
of little more than half a century ago. 

" They were, one and all, from the broadest and best 
to the narrowest and least frequented, very dark. The 
oil and cotton lamps, though regularly trimmed twice 
or thrice in the long winter nights, burnt feebly at the 
best ; and at a late hour, when they were unassisted by 
the lamps and candles in the shops, cast but a narrow 
track of doubtful light upon the footway, leaving the 
projecting doors and house-fronts in the deepest gloom. 
Many of the courts and lanes were left in total dark- 
ness ; those of the meaner sort, where one glimmering 
light twinkled for a score of houses, being favored in no 
slight degree. Even in these places, the inhabitants had 
often good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soon 
as it was lighted ; and, the watch being utterly ineffi- 



144 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

cient and powerless to prevent them, they did so at 
their pleasure. Thus, in the lightest thoroughfares, 
there was, at every turn, some obscure and dangerous 
spot whither a thief might fly for shelter, and few would 
care to follow ; and the city, being belted round by 
fields, green lanes, waste grounds, and lonely roads, 
dividing it at that time from the suburbs that have 
joined it since, escape, even where the pursuit was hot, 
was rendered easy. 

"It is no wonder, that, with these favoring circum- 
stances in full and constant operation, street robberies, 
often accompanied by cruel Avounds, and not unfre- 
quently by loss of life, should have been of nightly 
occurrence in the very heart of London, or that quiet 
folks should have had great dread of traversing its streets 
after the shops were closed. It was not unusual for 
those who wended home alone at midnight, to keep the 
middle of the road, the better to guard against surprise 
from lurking footpads. Few would venture to repair at 
a late hour to Kentish Town or Hampstead, or even to 
Kensington or Chelsea, unarmed and unattended ; while 
he who had been loudest and most valiant at the sup- 
per-table or the tavern, and had but a mile or so to go, 
was glad to fee a link-boy to escort him home. 

" There were many other characteristics — not quite 
so disagreeable — about the thoroughfares of London 
then, with which they had been long familiar. Some 
of the shops, especially those to the eastward of Temple 



CHAELES DICKENS. 145 

Bar, still adhered to the old practice of hanging out a 
sign ; and the creaking and swinging of these boards in 
their iron frames, on windy nights, formed a strange and 
mournful concert for the ears of those who lay awake in 
bed, or hurried through the streets. Long stands of 
hackney- chairs, and groups of chairmen, — compared 
with whom the coachmen of our day are gentle and 
polite, — obstructed the way, and filled the air with 
clamor ; night-cellars, indicated by a little stream of 
light crossing the pavement, and stretching out half- 
way into the road, and by the stifled roar of voices from 
below, yawned for the reception and entertainment of 
the most abandoned of both sexes ; under every shed 
and bulk small groups of link-boys gamed away the 
earnings of the day ; or one, more weary than the rest, 
gave way to sleep, and let the fragment of his torch fall 
hissing on the puddled ground. 

" Then there was the watch, with staff and lantern, 
crying the hour, and the kind of weather; and those 
who woke up at his voice, and turned them round in 
bed, were glad to hear it rained, or snowed, or blew, or 
froze, for very comfort's sake. The solitary passenger 
was startled by the chairmen's cry of ' By your leave, 
there ! ' as two came trotting past him with their empty 
vehicle, — carried backwards to show its being disen- 
gaged, — and hmTied to the nearest stand. Many a 
private chair, too, enclosing some fine lady, monstrously 
hooped and furbelowed, and preceded by running foot- 

10 



146 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

men bearing flambeaux, — for which extinguishers are 
yet suspended before the doors of a few houses of the 
better sort, — made the way gay and light as it danced 
along, and darker and more dismal when it had passed. 
It was not unusual for these running gentry, who carried 
it with a very high hand, to quarrel in the servants' hall 
while waiting for their masters and mistresses ; and, fall- 
ing to blows either there or in the street without, to 
strew the place of skirmish with hair -powder, frag- 
ments of bag-wigs, and scattered nosegays. Gaming, the 
vice which ran so high among all classes (the fashion 
being of course set by the upper), was generally the 
cause of these disputes; for cards 'and dice were as 
openly used, and worked as much mischief, and yielded 
as much excitement, below stairs as above. While inci- 
dents like these, arising out of drums and masquerades 
and parties at quadrille, were passing at the west end 
of the town, heavy stage-coaches, and scarce heavier 
wagons, were lumbering slowly towards the city, the 
coachmen, guard, and passengers armed to the teeth ; 
and the coach — a day or so, perhaps, behind its time, 
but that was nothing — despoiled by highwaymen, who 
made no scruple to attack, alone and single-handed, a 
whole caravan of goods and men, and sometimes shot 
a passenger or two, and were sometimes shot themselves, 
just as the case might be. On the morrow, rumors of 
this new act of daring on the road yielded matter for a 
few hours' conversation through the town ; and a Public 



CHARLES DICKENS. 147 

Progress of some fine gentlemen (half drunk) to Ty- 
burn, dressed in the newest fashion, and damning the 
ordinary with unspeakable gallantry and grace, fur- 
nished to the populace at once a pleasant excitement, 
and a wholesome and profound example." 

The next extract is a country picture, and exhibits 
the minuteness of a close observer, while it conveys re- 
ligious lessons of hope and comfort, proving that the 
writer believed in the everlasting love of God. 

In the picture of the poor, weak-minded Barnaby, we 
have a vivid sketch of one, who, witless himself, was 
under the protection of the Infinitely Wise ; and it calls 
to mind what Lucy Larcom wrote of Larkin Moore, — 

" And so he wandered east and west, 
And up and down the land ; 
But where he paused for food or rest, 

'Twas hard to understand. 
He surely had one sheltering nest, — 
The hollow of God's hand." 

Poor Barnaby Rudge and his mother are thus de- 
scribed : — 

"Leaving the favored and well -received and flat- 
tered of the world, — him of the world most worldly, 
who never compromised himself by an ungentlemanly 
action, and never was guilty of a manly one, — to lie 
smilingly asleep ; for even sleep, working but little 



148 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

change in liis dissembling face, became with him a piece 
of cold, conventional hypocrisy, — we follow in the 
steps of two slow travellers on foot, making towards 
Chigwell. 

" Barnaby and his mother. Grip in their company, of 
course. 

" The widow, to whom each painful mile seemed 
longer than the last, toiled wearily along ; while Bar- 
naby, yielding to every inconstant impulse, fluttered 
here and there, now leaving her far behind, now linger- 
ing far behind himself, now darting into some by -lane or 
path, and leaving her to pursue her way alone until he 
stealthily emerged again, and came upon her with a wild 
shout of merriment, as his wayward and capricious na- 
ture prompted. Now he would call to her from the toj)- 
most branch of some high tree by the roadside ; now, 
using his tall staff as a leaping-pole, come flying over 
ditch or hedge or five-barred gate ; now run with sur- 
prising swiftness for a mile or more on the straight road, 
and, halting, sport upon a patch of grass with Grip till 
she came up. These were his delights ; and when his 
patient mother heard his merry voice, or looked into his 
flushed and healthy face, she would not have abated 
them by one sad word or murmur, though each had 
been to her a source of suffering in the same degree as 
it was to him of pleasure. 

" It is something to look upon enjoyment, so that it 
be free and wild, and in the face of Nature, though it is 



CHARLES DICKENS. 149 

but the enjoyment of an idiot ; it is something to know 
that Heaven has left the capacity of gladness in such a 
creature's breast ; it is something to be assured, that, 
however lightly men may crush that faculty in their fel- 
lows, the great Creator of mankind imparts it even to 
his despised and slighted work. Who would not rather 
see a poor idiot happy in the sunlight than a wise man 
pining in a darkened jail ? 

" Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face 
of Infinite Benevolence with an eternal frown, read in 
the everlasting book wide open to your view, the les- 
son it would teach. Its pictures are not in black and 
sombre hues, but bright and glowing tints; its music, 
save when ye drown it, is not in sighs and groans, 
but songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the million 
voices in the summer air, and find one dismal as your 
own. Remember, if ye can, the sense of hope and 
pleasure which every glad return of day awakens in the 
breast of all your kind who have not changed their na- 
ture ; and learn some wisdom, even from the witless, 
when their hearts are lifted up, they know not why, by 
all the mirth and happiness it brings. 

'' The widow's breast was full of care, was laden 
heavily with secret dread and sorrow ; but her boy's 
gayety of heart gladdened her, and beguiled the long 
journey. Sometimes he would bid her lean upon his 
arm, and would keep beside her steadily for a short dis- 
tance ; but it was more his nature to be rambling to and 



150 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

fro : and she better liked to see liim free and happy, 
even than to have him near her, because she loved him 
better than herself. 

" She had quitted the place to which they were trav- 
elling, directly after the event which had changed her 
whole existence, "and for two and twenty 3^ears had 
never had courage to revisit it. It was her native vil- 
lage. • How many recollections crowded on her mind 
when it appeared in sight ! 

" Two and twenty years, — her boy's whole life and 
history. The last time she looked back upon those 
roofs among the trees, she carried him in her arms, 
an infant. How often since that time had she sat be- 
side him night and day, watching for the dawn of mind 
that never came I how had she feared and doubted, and 
yet hoped, long after conviction forced itself upon her 1 
The little stratagems she had devised to try him, the 
little tokens he had given in his childish way, — not of 
dulness. But of something infinitely worse, so ghastly 
and unchildlike in its cunning, — came back as vividly 
as if but yesterday had intervened. The room in which 
they used to be ; the spot in which his cradle stood ; he 
old and elfin-like in face, but ever dear to her, gazing at 
her with a wild and vacant eye, and crooning some un- 
couth song as she sat by and rocked him, — every cir- 
cumstance of his infancy came thronging back ; and the 
most trivial, perhaps, the most distinctly. 

" His older childhood too ; the strange imaginings he 



CHARLES DICKENS. 151 

had ; liis terror of certain senseless things, — familiar 
objects he endowed with life ; the slow and gradual 
breaking-out of that one horror, in which, before his 
birth, his darkened intellect began ; how, in the midst 
of all, she had found some hope and comfort in his being 
unhke another child, and had gone on almost believing 
in the slow development of his mind, until he grew a 
man, and then his childhood was complete and lasting, 
— one after another, all these old thoughts sprung up 
within her, strong after their long slumber, and bitterer 
than ever. 

" She took his arm; and they hurried through the vil- 
lage street. It was the same as it was wont to be in old 
times, yet different too, and wore another air. The 
change was in herself, not it ; but she never thought of 
that, and wondered at its alteration, — where it lay, and 
what it was. 

" The people all knew Barnaby ; and the children of 
the place came flocking round him, as she remem- 
bered to have done with their fathers and mothers, 
round some silly beggar -man, when a child herself. 
None of them knew her. They passed each well-remem- 
bered house and yard and homestead, and, striking into 
the fields, were soon alone again." 

In after-time, Barnaby and his mother are described 
as being at home in the countr}^, where she gives him 
some wholesome lessons ; which he receives to the best 



152 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

of liis ability, and which would benefit many others, if 
they would receive them._ 

" While the worst passions of the worst men were 
thus working in the dark, and the mantle of religion, 
assumed to cover the ugliest deformities, threatened to 
become the shroud of all that was good and peaceful in 
society, a circumstance occurred which once more altered 
the position of two persons from whom this history has 
long been separated, and to whom it must now return. 

" In a small English country town, the inhabitants of 
which supported themselves by the labor of their hands 
in plaiting and preparing straw for those who made 
bonnets and other articles, of dress and ornament from 
that material, — concealed under an assumed name, and, 
living in a quiet poverty which knew no change, no 
pleasures, and few cares but that of struggling on from 
day to day in the one great toil for bread, — dwelt Bar- 
naby and his mother. Their poor cottage had known 
no stranger's foot since they sought the shelter of its 
roof five years before ; nor had they in all that time 
held any commerce or communication with the old world 
from which they had fled. To labor in peace, and de- 
vote her labor and her life to lier poor son, was all the 
widow sought. If happiness can be said at any time to 
be the lot of one on whom a secret sorrow preys, she 
was happy now. Tranquillity, resignation, and her 
strono^ love of him who needed it so much, formed the 



CHARLES DICKENS. 153 

small circle of her quiet joys ; and, while that remained 
unbroken, she was contented. * 

" For Barnaby himself, the time which had flown by 
had passed him like the wind. The daily suns of years 
had shed no brighter gleam of reason on his mind: no 
dawn had broken on his long, dark night. He would sit 
sometimes, often for days together, on a low seat by 
the fire or by the cottage-door, busy at work (for he had 
learnt the art his mother plied), and listening (God help 
him !) to the tales she would repeat as a lure to keep him 
in her sight. He had no recollection of these little nar- 
ratives (the tale of yesterday was new upon the mor- 
row) ; but he liked them at the moment, and, Avhen the 
humor held him, would remain patiently within doors, 
hearing her stories like a little child, and working cheer- 
fully from sunrise until it was too dark to see. 

" At other times, and then their scanty earnings 
were scarcely sufficient to furnish them with food, though 
of the coarsest sort, he would wander abroad from 
dawn of day until the twilight deepened into night. 
Few in that place, even of the children, could be idle ; 
and he had no companions of his own kind. Indeed, 
there were not many who could have kept up with him 
in his rambles, had there been a legion. But there were 
a scoje of vagabond dogs belonging to the neighbors, 
who served his purpose quite as well. With two or 
three of these, or sometimes with a full half-dozen, bark- 
ing at his heels, he would sally forth on some long expe- 



154 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

dition that consumed the day ; and though, on their 
return at nightffill, the dogs would come home Hmping 
and sore-footed, and almost spent with their fatigue, 
Barnaby was up and off again at sunrise with some new 
attendants of the same class, with whom he would re- 
turn in like manner. On all these travels, Grij), in his 
little basket at his master's back, was a constant member 
of the party ; and, when they set off in fine weather and 
in high spirits, no dog barked louder than the raven. 

" Their pleasures on these excursions were simple 
enough. A crust of bread and scrap of meat, with 
water from the brook or spring, sufficed for their repast. 
Barnaby's enjoyments were to walk and run and leap 
till he was tired ; then to lie down on the long grass, or 
by the growing corn, or in the shade of some tall tree, 
looking upward at the light clouds as they floated over 
the blue surface of the sky, and listening to the lark as 
she poured out her brilliant song. There were wild- 
flowers to pluck, — the bright-red poppy, the gentle 
harebell, the cowslip, and the rose. There were birds 
to watch, fish, ants, worms ; hares or rabbits, as they 
darted across the distant pathway in the wood, and so 
were gone ; millions of living things to have an interest 
in, and lie in wait for, and clap hands and shout in 
memory of when they had disappeared. In default of 
these, or when they wearied, there was the merry sun- 
light to hunt out, as it crept in aslant through leaves and 
boughs of trees, and hid far down — deep, deep in hoi- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 155 

low places — like a silver pool, where nodding branches 
seemed to bathe and sport ; sweet scents of summer air 
breatliing over fields of beans or clover ; the perfume of 
wet leaves or moss ; the life of waving trees, and 
shadows always changing. When these or any of them 
tired, or, in excess of pleasing, tempted him to shut his 
ej^es, there was slumber in the midst of all these soft 
delights, with the gentle wind murmuring like music in 
his ears, and every thing around melting into one de- 
licious dream. 

'-' Their hut, for it was little more, stood on the 
outskirts of the town, at a short distance from the high- 
road, but in a secluded place, where few chance passen- 
gers strayed at any season of the year. It had a plot 
of garden-ground attached, which Barnaby, in fits and 
starts of working, trimmed, and kept in order. Within 
doors and without, his mother labored for their common 
good ; and hail, rain, snow, or sunshine found no differ- 
ence in her. 

" Though so far removed from the scenes of her past 
life, and with so little thought or hope of ever visiting 
them again, she seemed to have a strange desire to know 
what happened in the busy world. Any old newspapers 
or scrap of intelligence from London, she caught at with 
avidity. The excitement it produced was not of a j^leas- 
urable kind, for her manner {ft such times expressed the 
keenest anxiety and dread ; but it never faded in the 
least degree. Then, and in stormy winter nights, when 



156 LIFE AND WRJ TINGS OF 

the wind blew loud and strong, the okl expression came 
into her face ; and she would be seized with a fit of 
trembhng, like one who had an ague. But Barnaby 
noted little of this ; and, putting a great constraint upon 
herself, she usually recovered her accustomed manner 
before the change had caught his observation. 

" Grip was by no means an idle or unprofitable mem- 
ber of the humble household. Partly by dint of Bar- 
naby's tuition, and partly by pursuing a species of self- 
instruction common to his tribe, and exerting his powers 
of observation to the utmost, he had acquired a degree 
of sagacity which rendered him famous for miles round. 
His conversational powers and surprising performances 
were the universal theme ; and as many persons came 
to see the wonderful raven, and none left his exertions 
unrewarded (when he condescended to exhibit, which 
was not always ; for genius is capricious), his earnings 
formed an important item in the common stock. Indeed, 
the bird himself appeared to know his value well ; for, 
though he was perfectly free and unrestrained in the 
presence of Barnaby and his mother, he maintained in 
public an amazing gravity, and never stooped to any 
other gratuitous performances than biting the ankles of 
vagabond boys (an exercise in which he much delighted), 
killing a fowl or two occasionally, and swallowing the 
dinners of various neighboring dogs, of whom the bold- 
est held him in great awe and dread. 

" Time had ghded on in this way, and nothing had 



CHARLES DICKENS. 157 

happened to disturb or change their mode of life, when, 
one summer's night in June, they were in their little 
garden, resting from the labors of the day. The widow's 
work was yet upon her knee, and strewn upon the ground 
about her ; and Barnaby stood leaning on his spade, 
gazing at the brightness in the west, and singing softly 
to himself. 

'"A brave evening, mother I If we had, chinking in 
our pockets, but a few specks of that gold which is 
piled up yonder in the sky, we should be rich for life.' 

" ' We are better as we are,' returned the widow with 
a quiet smile. ' Let us be contented, and we do not 
want and need not care to have it, though it lay shining 
at our feet.' 

" ' Ay ! ' said Barnaby, resting with crossed arms on 
his s]oade, and looking wistfully at the sunset, ' that's 
well enough, mother ; but gold's a good thing to have. 
I wish that I knew where to find it ! Grip and I could 
do much with gold, be sure of that.' 

" ' What would you do ? ' she asked. 

" ' What ? A world of things. We'd dress finely, — 
you and I, I mean, not Grip, — keep horses, dogs, wear 
bright colors and feathers, do no more work, live deli- 
cately and at our ease. Oh I we'd find uses for it, mother, 
and uses that would do us good. I would I knew where 
gold was buried ! How hard I'd work to dig it up ! ' 

" ' Yon do not know,' said his mother, rising from her 
seat, and laying her hand upon his shoulder, ' what men 



158 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

have (lone to Avin it, and how they have found, too late, 
that it gutters brightest at a distance, and turns quite 
dim and dull when handled.' 

" ' Ay, ay ! so you say, so you think/ he answered, 
still looking eagerly in the same direction. ' For all 
that, mother, I should like to try.' 

" ' Do you not see,' she said, 'how red it is? Noth- 
ing bears so many stains of blood as gold. Avoid it. 
None have such cause to hate its name as we have. Do 
not so much as think of it, dear love. It has brought 
such misery and suffering on your head and mine as few 
have known, and God grant few may have to undergo. 
I would rather we were dead, and laid down in our 
graves, than you should ever come to love it.' 

" For a moment, Barnaby withdrew his eyes, and 
looked at her with wonder. Then, glancing from the 
redness in the sky to the mark upon his wrist, as if he 
would compare the two, he seemed about to question 
her with earnestness, when a new object caught his 
wandering attention, and made him quite forgetful of 
his purpose." 

"The Old Curiosity Shop" brought to the public 
view that dear Little Nell,* who has henceforth " a name 
to live." The first mention of this sweet child, who 
was one of the most beautifLd creations of Dickens, is 
in the following form : — 

* A fine cast of Little Nell, in a sitting posture, may be seen among the statuary 
at the Boston Athenaeum. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 159 

" One night, I had roamed into the city, and was 
walking slowly on in my usual way, musing upon a 
great many things, when I was arrested by an inquiry, 
the purport of which did not reach me, but which 
seemed to be addressed to myself, and was preferred in 
a soft, sweet voice, that struck me very pleasantly. 1 
turned hastily round, and found at riiy elbow a pretty 
little girl, who begged to be directed to a certain street 
at a considerable distance, and indeed in quite another 
quarter of the town. 

" ' It is a very long way from here,' said I, ' my 
child.' 

" ' I know that, sir,' she replied timidly. ' I am afraid 
it is a very long way ; for I came from there to-night.' 

" 'Alone ? ' said I in some surprise. 

" ' Oh, yes I I don't mind that. But I am a little 
frightened now ; for I have lost my road.' 

"'And what made you ask it of me? Suppose I 
should tell you wrong ? ' 

" ' I am sure you will not do that,' said the little 
creature : ' you are such a very old gentleman, and walk 
so slow yourself.' 

" I cannot describe how much I was impressed by 
this appeal, and the energy with which it was made, 
which brought a tear into the child's clear eye, and 
made her slight figure tremble as she looked up into my 
face. 

" ' Come,' said I : ' I'll take you there.' 



160 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" She put her hand in mine as confidingly as if she 
had known me from her cradle, and we trudged away 
together ; the little creature accommodating her pace to 
mine, and rather seeming to lead and take care of me 
than I to be protecting her. I observed that every now 
and then she stole a curious look at my face, as if to 
make quite sure that I was not deceiving her, and that 
these glances (very sharp and keen they were too) 
seemed to increase her confidence at every repetition. 

" For my part, my curiosity and interest were, at 
least, equal to the child's ; for child she certainly was, 
although I thought it probable, from what I could make 
out, that her very small and delicate frame imparted a 
peculiar youthfulness to her appearance. Though more 
scantily attired than she might have been, she was 
dressed with perfect neatness, and betrayed no mark 
of poverty or neglect. 

u 4 ^ho has sent you so far by yourself ? ' said I. 

" ' Somebody who is very kind to me, sir.' 

" ' And what have you been doing ? ' 

" ' That I must not tell,' said the child. 

" There was something in the manner of this reply, 
which caused me to look at the little creature with an 
involuntary expression of surprise ; for I wondered what 
kind of errand it might be that occasioned her to be 
prepared for questioning. Her quick eye seemed to 
read my thoughts. As it met mine, she added, that 
there was no harm in what she had been doing ; but it 



CHARLES DICKENS. * 161 

was a great secret, — a secret which she did not even 
know herself. 

" This was said with no appearance of cunning or de- 
ceit, but with an unsuspicious frankness that bore the 
impress of truth. She walked on as before, growing 
more familiar with me as we proceeded, and talldng 
cheerfully by the way ; but she said no more about her 
home, beyond remarking that we were going quite a 
new road, and asking if it were a short one. • 

" While we were thus engaged, I revolved in my mind 
a hundred explanations of the riddle, and rejected them 
every one. I really felt ashamed to take advantage of 
the ingenuousness or grateful feeling of the child for 
the purpose of gratifying my curiosity. I love these 
little people ; and it is not a slight thing when they who 
are so fresh from God love us. As I had felt pleased, 
at first, by her confidence, I determined to deserve it, 
and to do credit to the nature which had prompted her 
to repose it in me. 

" There was no reason, however, why I should refrain 
from seeing the person who had inconsiderately sent her 
to so great a distance by night, and alone ; and as it 
was not improbable, that, if she found herself near 
home, she might take farewell of me, and deprive me 
of the opportunity, I avoided the most frequented waj^s, 
and took the most intricate. Thus it was not until we 
arrived in the street itself that she knew where we 
were. Clapping her hands with pleasure, and running 



162 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

on before me for a short distance, my little acquaintance 
stopped at a door, and, remaining on the step till I came 
up, knocked at it when I joined her. 

"A part of this door was of glass, unprotected by 
any shutter, which I did not observe at first ; for all 
was very dark and silent within, and I was anxious (as 
indeed the child was also) for an answer to her sum- 
mons. When she had knocked twice or thrice, there 
was a n.oise as if some person were moving inside ; and 
at length a faint light appeared through the glass, which, 
as it ap|)roached very slowly, — the bearer having to 
make his way through a great many scattered articles, 
— enabled me to see both what Idnd of person it was 
who advanced, and what kind of place it was through 
which he came. 

" He was a little old man, with long gray hair, whose 
face and figure, as he held the light above his head, and 
looked before him as he approached, I could plainly see. 
Though much altered by age, I fancied I could recog- 
nize in his spare and slender foi^m something of that 
delicate mould which I had noticed in the child. Their 
bright blue eyes were certainly alike ; but his face was 
so deeply furrowed, and so very full of care, that here 
all resemblance ceased. 

" The place, through which he made his way at leis- 
ure, was one of those receptacles for old and curious 
things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this 
town, and to hide their musty treasures from the public 



CHARLES DICKENS. 163 

eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail 
standing, like ghosts in armor, here and there ; fantastic 
carvings brought from monkish cloisters ; rusty weapons 
of various kinds ; distorted figures in china and wood 
and iron and ivory ; tapestry, and strange furniture that 
might have been designed in dreams. The haggard as- 
pect of the little old man was wonderfully suited to the 
place : he might have groped among old churches and 
tombs and deserted houses, and gathered all the spoils 
with his own hands. There was nothing in the whole 
collection but was in keeping with himself ; nothing that 
looked older or more worn than he. 

" As he turned the key in the lock, he surveyed me 
with some astonishment, which was not diminished 
when he looked from me to my companion. The 
door being opened, the child addressed him as her 
grandfather, and told him the little story of our com- 
panionship. 

" ' Why, bless thee, child ! ' said the old man, patting 
her on the head, ' how couldst thou miss thy way ? 
What if I had lost thee, Nell ? ' 

" ' I would have found my way back to you^ grand- 
father,' said the child boldly : ' never fear. ' 

" The old man kissed her ; then turned to me, and 
begged me to walk in. I did so. The door was closed 
and locked. Preceding me with the light, he led me 
through the place I had already seen from without, into 
a small sitting-room behind, in which was another door 



164 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

opening into a kind of closet, where I saw a little Led 
that a fairy might have slept in, it looked so very small, 
and was so prettily arranged. The child took a candle, 
and tripped into tliis little room, leaving the old man and 
me together. 

" ' You must be tired, sir,' said he as he placed a 
chair near the fire. ' How can I thank you ? ' 

" ' By taking more care of your grandchild another 
time, my good friend,' I replied. 

" ' More care ! ' said the old man in a shrill voice ; ' more 
care of Nelly ! Why, who ever loved a child as I love 
Nell?' 

" He said this with such evident surprise, that I was 
perplexed what answer to make ; the more so, because, 
coupled with something feeble and wandering in his 
manner, there were, in his face, marks of deep and anx- 
ious thought, which convinced me that he could not be, 
as I had been at first inclined to suppose, in a state of 
dotage or imbecility. 

" ' I don't think you consider ' — I began. 

" ' I don't consider ! ' cried the old man, interrupting 
me, — ' I don't consider her ! Ah, how little you knoAV 
of the truth ! Little Nelly, Little Nelly ! ' 

"It would be impossible for any man — I care not 
what his form of speech might be — to express more af- 
fection than the dealer in curiosities did in these four 
words. I waited for him to speak again ; but he rested 
his chin upon his hand, and, shaking his head twice or 
thrice, fixed his eyes upon the fire. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 165 

" While we were sitting tlius, in silence, the door of 
the closet opened, and the child returned, her light 
brown hair hanging loose about her neck, and her face 
flushed with the haste she had made to rejoin us. She 
busied herself immediately in preparing supper. While 
she was thus engaged, I remarked that the old man took 
an opportunity of observing me more closely than he 
had done yet. I was surprised to see, that, all this 
time, every thing was done by this child, and that there 
appeared to be no other persons but ourselves in the 
house. I took advantage of a moment, when she was 
absent, to venture a hint on this point, to which the old 
man replied that there were few grown persons as trust- 
worthy or as careful as she. 

" ' It always grieves me,' I observed, roused by what 
I took to be his selfishness : ' it always grieves me to 
contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of 
life when they are scarcely more than infants. It 
checks their confidence and simplicity, — two of the 
best qualities that Heaven gives them, — and demands 
that they share our sorrows before they are capable of 
entering into our enjoyments.' 

" ' It will never check hers,' said the old man, looking 
steadily at me : ' the springs are too deep. Besides, the 
children of the poor know but few pleasures. Even the 
cheap dehghts of childhood must be bought and paid 
for.' " 



1G6 LIFE AND WHITINGS OF 

On Mr. Dickens's first visit to this country, lie made a 
speech at the dinner given him in Boston ; in which he 
thus alluded to Little Nell : — 

" ' There is one other point connected with the labors, 
if I may call them so, that you hold in such generous 
esteem, to which I cannot help adverting. I cannot 
help expressing the delight, the more than happiness, it 
was to me to find so strong an intere'st awakened on this 
side of the water in favor of that little heroine of mine 
to whom your president has made allusion; who died in 
her youth. I had letters about that child, in England, 
from the dwellers in log-huts among the morasses and 
swamps, and densest forests, and deep solitudes of the 
Far West. Many a sturdy hand hard with the axe and 
spade, and browned by the summer's sun, has taken up 
the pen, and written to me a little history of domestic 
joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with 
something of interest in that little tale, or some comfort 
or happiness derived from it ; and the writer has always 
addressed me, not as a writer of books for sale, resident 
some four or five thousand miles away, but as a friend 
to whom he might freely impart the joys and sorrows of 
his own fireside. Many a mother — I could reckon them 
now by dozens, not by units — has done the like ; and 
has told me how she lost such a child at such a time, and 
where she lay buried, and how good she was, and how, 
in this or that respect, she resembled Nell. I do assure 



CHARLES DICKENS. 167. 

you that no circumstance of my life lias given me one- 
liunclredth part of the gratification I have derived from 
this source. I was wavering at the time, whether or not 
to wind up my clock, and come and see tliis country ; 
and this decided me. I feel as if it were a positive 
duty ; as if I were bound to pack up my clothes, and 
come and see my friends ; and even now I have such an 
odd sensation in connection with these things, that you 
have no chance of spoiling me. I feel as though we 
were agreeing — as indeed we are, if we substitute for 
fictitious characters the classes from which they are 
drawn — about third parties in whom we had a com- 
mon interest. At every new act of kindness on your 
part, I say it to myself, ' That's for Oliver ; I should not 
wonder if that was meant for Smike ; I have no doubt 
that it was intended for Nell ; ' and so become a much 
happier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring man, 
than ever I was before.' " 

Every reader of Dickens feels as if Little Nell was 
almost a reality, and takes, therefore, a sad interest in 
recalling the final scene of her life. Thus pathetically 
does the author of that sweet character depict the death 
of Little Nell : — 

" She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm, so 
free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She 
seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God, and 



,168 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

waiting for the breath of life ; not one who had lived, 
and suffered death. Her couch was dressed with here 
and there some winter berries and green leaves, gath- 
ered in a spot she had been used to favor. ' When I 
die, put near me something that haa loved the light, and 
had the sky above it always.' These were her words. 

'^ She was dead ! — dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell 
was dead. Her little bird, a poor, slight thing the 
pressure of a finger would have crushed, was stirring 
nimbly in his cage ; and the strong heart of its child-mis- 
tress was mute and motionless forever ! Where were 
the traces of her early cares, her sufferings, and fatigues ? 
All gone. Sorrow was dead, indeed, in her; but peace 
and perfect happiness were born, imaged in her tranquil 
beauty and profound repose. 

" And still her former self lay there, unaltered in its 
change. Yes, the old fireside had smiled upon that 
same sweet face. It had passed like a dream through 
the haunts of misery and care. At the door of the poor 
schoolmaster on the summer evening; before the fur- 
nace-fire upon the cold, wet night ; at the still bedside 
of the dying boy, — there had been the same mild and 
lovely look. So shall we know the angels in their 
majesty after death. 

" The old man held one languid arm in his, and the 
small, tight hand folded to his breast for warmth. It 
was the hand she had stretched out to him with her last 
smile, — the hand that had led him on through all their 



CHARLES DICKENS. 169 

wanderings. Ever and anon he pressed it to his hps ; 
then hugged it to his breast again, murmuring that it 
was warmer now : and, as he said it, he looked in agony 
to those who stood around, as if imploring them to help 
her. 

" She was dead, and past all help, or need of help. 
The ancient rooms she had seemed to fill with life, even 
while her own was waning fast ; the garden she had 
tended ; the eyes she had gladdened ; the noiseless 
haunts of many a thoughtless hour ; the paths she had 
trodden, as it were, but yesterday, — could know her 
no more. 

" ' It is not,' said the schoolmaster, as he bent down 
to kiss her on the cheek, and gave his tears free vent, — 
' it is not in this world that Heaven's justice ends. 
Think what it is, compared with the world to which her 
young spirit has winged its early flight ; and say, if one 
deliberate wish, expressed in solemn tones above this 
bed, could call her back to life, which of us would 
utter it ? ' 

" She had been dead two days. They were all about 
her at the time, knowing that the end was drawing on. 
She died soon after daybreak. They had read and 
talked to her in the earlier portion of the night ; but, as 
the hours crept on, she sank to sleep. They could tell, 
by what she faintly uttered in her dreams, that they 
were of her journeyings with the old man. They were 
of no painful scenes, but of those who had helped them, 



170 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

and used them kindly ; for she often said, ' God bless 
you ! ' with great fervor. 

" Waking, she never wandered in her mind but once ; 
and that was at beautiful music, which, she said, was in 
the air. God knows. It may have been. Opening her 
eyes at last from a very quiet sleep, she begged that 
they would kiss her once again. That done, she turned 
to the old man, with a lovely smile upon her face, such, 
they said, as they had never seen, and could never for- 
get, and clung v/ith both arms about his neck. She 
had never murmured or complained, but with a quiet 
mind, and a manner quite unaltered, save that she every 
day became more earnest and more grateful to them, 
faded like the light upon the summer's evening." 

In its most pathetic and beautiful passages, the prose 
of Dickens runs easily and naturally into rhyme and 
metre, and shows him to be a poet, no less than a novel- 
ist, of a high order. This tendency of his writing is 
very vividly illustrated by the account of the funeral of 
Little Nell in " The Old. Curiosity Shop; " Avhich is ap- 
pended exactly as it stands in the book, with the excep- 
tion of three slight verbal alterations : — 

" And now the bell — the bell 
She had so often heard by night and day, 
And listened to with solemn pleasure, 
E'en as a living voice — 
Rung its remorseless toll for her, 
So young, so beautiful, so good. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 171 

*' Decrepit age, and vigorous life, 
And blooming youth, and helpless infancy, 

Poured forth — on crutches, in the pride of strength 
And health, in the full blush 
Of promise, the mere dawn of life — 
To gather round her tomb. Old men were there. 
Whose eyes were dim. 
And senses failing ; 
Grandames, who might have died ten years ago, 
And still been old ; the deaf, the blind, the lame, 

The palsied, — 
The living dead in many shapes and forms, — 
To see the closing of this early grave. 

What was the death it would shut in 
To that which still could crawl and keep above it ! 
Along the crowded path they bore her now, 

Pure as the new-fallen snow 
That covered it, whose day on earth 

Had been as fleeting. 
Under that porch where she had sat when Heaven 
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot. 

She passed again ; and the old church 
"Received her in its quiet shade." 

In Forster's " Life of Lanclor," light is thrown on the 
manner in which tlie fancy which gave us Little Nell 
took form in the mind of Mr. Dickens. This is the 
testimony of that biographer : — 

" When I first visited Landor in Bath, the city was 
only accessible by coach ; and no coach left after eight 
o'clock in the morning. But these difficulties in the 



172 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

way of intercourse soon disappeared ; and the travelling 
that had occupied two entire days took up little more 
than double the same number of hours. The first time 
Mr. Dickens went with me, the railroad was open ; and 
it had become possible to leave in the afternoon, dine 
and pass the -evening with Landor, and breakfast the 
next morning in London. Still vividly remembered by 
both are such evenings, when a night's sleep pur- 
chased for us cheaply the pleasure of being present with 
him on his birthday ; and I think it was at the first 
celebration of the Idnd, in the first of his Bath lodgings 
(35 St. James Square), that the fancy which took the 
form of Little Nell in "The Curiosity Shop" first 
dawned on the genius of its creator. No character in 
prose-fiction was a greater favorite of Landor. He 
thought that upon her Juliet might for a moment have 
turned her eyes from Romeo ; and that Desdemona 
might have taken her hair-breadth escapes to heart, so 
interesting and pathetic did she seem to him : and when, 
some years later, the circumstance I have named was re- 
called to him, he broke into one of those whimsical bursts 
of comical extravagance out of which arose the fancy of 
Boythorn. With tremendous emphasis, he confirmed the 
fact, and added, that he had never in his life regretted 
any thing so much as his having failed to carry out an 
intention he had formed respecting it ; for he meant to 
have purchased that house (35 St. James Square), and 
then and there to have burned it to the ground, to 



CHARLES DICKENS. 173 

the end that no meaner association should ever dese- 
crate the birthplace of Nell. Then he would pause a 
little, become conscious of our sense of his absurdity, 
and break into a thundering peal of laughter." 

In America, the admiration of the sketches drawn of 
children by Mr. Dickens reached so great a pitch of en- 
thusiasm, that there was a demand for those pictures in 
separate form ; and, accordingly, a neat little book, called 
" Child-Pictures from Dickens," was issued by his Bos- 
ton publishers, well illustrated; and of which he said 
himself, — 

*' These chapters, as being especially associated with 
children, have been selected from my various books for 
separate publication, under the title appended to the 
volume. . . . The compilation is made for American chil- 
dren, with my consent." They are the stories of " Lit- 
tle Nell," " Paul and Florence," " The Fat Boy," and 
others. 

" jMaster Humphrey's Clock" ticked on but a short time. 
In the introductory framework of the tales from which 
we have made extracts, Mr. Pickwick, with Sam Weller 
and his father, was brought in, but scarcely successfully. 
Several small contributions to " Bentley's Miscellany " 
are not to be found in Mr. Dickens's collected works, as 
too large a sum was required for permission to reprint 
them. 

During j\Ir. Dickens's connection with Bentley, he 



174 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

compiled " Memoirs of Joseph Grimalcli," illustrated by 
Cruikshank, from a sort of autobiography which the 
great clown had written, at immense length, before his 
death. It is as good a theatrical biography as the aver- 
age, which is not saying much, and was with the com- 
piler mainly a labor of love. It was published in 1840, 
in two volumes, and shows, at least, that the rising 
author was not afraid of hard work. 

''It is said, that when Dickens saw a strange or odd 
name on a shop-board, or in walking through a village 
or countr}^ town, he entered it in his pocket-book, and 
added it to his reserve list. Then, runs the story, when 
he wanted a striking surname for a new character, he 
had but to take the first half of one real name, and to 
add to it the second half of another, to produce the 
exact effect upon the eye and ear of the reader he 
desired." 



CHAPTER VII. 



FIRST VISIT TO THE UNITED STATES. 



Testimony of "The New- York Tribune." — American Notes for General Circula- 
tion. — Wholesome Truths for a Nation. — Slavery. — Bad Manners. — Allegha- 
nies. — Niagara. 

" There is no other land like thee, 
No dearer shore ; 
Thou art the shelter of the free : 
The home, the port, of liberty. 
Thou hast been, and shalt ever be 
Till time is o'er." 

Percival. 

" God that made the world . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to 
dwell on all tlie face of the earth." — Acts xvii. 26. 



ELL does " The New- York Tribune " de- 
clare that, — 

" It wiU be. the glory of Charles Dickens, 
when his fame comes to be fairly weighed, 
not that he has created some of the most beautiful 
and by far the most humorous characters in English 
fiction, not that he has drawn scenes of real life with 
a vividness no artist ever attained before, but that he 
has acquired such an absolute mastery over the human 
heart, that we take his ideal men and women at once to 

175 




176 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

our bosoms, and make every one of his books a gallery 
of our personal friends. Little Nell is not the most 
beautiful creation in our literature by any means ; but 
is there any loved so well ? ' Oliver Twist ' is not re- 
markably good as a novel ; but ever since we read it, — 
thirty years ago, — we have been crying ' for more.' Bob 
Cratchit and his lame child. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Ben- 
jamin Micawber, Pickwick, — dear old monarch of them 
all, — these are not for us the airy fictions of the brain, 
but flesh-aud-blood friends, whom we love with all our 
hearts, and hope to meet some day in this very world. 
It is the greatness of Dickens, that he can inspire us 
with feelings like these ; and no other man has ever done 
it in an equal degree. 

" Ten or twenty millions of people keep a corner in 
their hearts for Dickens, because he has seen so perfectly 
the poetry, the beauty, the hundred lessons, which the 
life of the masses contains ; and in all that he has done 
he has striven for their good. ' I have always had, and 
always shall have,' said he on his first visit to this coun- 
try, ' an earnest and true desire to contribute, as far as 
in me lies, to the common stock of healthful cheerfulness 
and enjoyment. I believe that Virtue shows quite as 
well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine 
linen. I believe that she, and every beautiful object in 
external Nature, claims some sympathy in the breast of 
the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily 
bread.' So, in the faith that literature was not for the 



CHARLES DICKENS. 177 

rich alone, and the noblest work was the work clone for 
the poor, he bent himself bravely to his splendid task. 
Whether battling with the weapons of his wit for the 
release of poor prisoners or poor schoolboys, or humanity 
for almshouse paupers, or relief for befogged and plun- 
dered clients and a public ridden to death by aristo- 
cratic office-holders, or founding a great liberal news- 
paper in the interest of popular government and free 
education, or refusing with dignity an invitation to 
attend as an actor the court where he could not be re- 
ceived as a private man, Charles Dickens, without a 
suspicion of demagogism, without the affectation of 
condescending, without uttering one insincere or flatter- 
ing word, made himself as truly the poet and prophet 
of the people in prose as Burns was their chosen singer 
in verse. It is for this reason, that, wherever the English 
language is spoken, Charles Dickens was cherished as a 
friend. It is for this reason, that his death awakens 
such universal sorrow, and that his name will be held 
in sincerely affectionate remembrance to the latest gen- 
erations." 

According to Mr. Perkins, — 

" By the time that ' Barnaby Rudge ' was finished, 
during the year 1841, even the vigorous and enduring 
frame of the new novelist was sensibly fatigued. No 
wonder. In six years, he had fully established a new 
department of romance, erecting a reputation which 

12 



178 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

would have remained a lasting one witliout another 
word or volume ; and had proved hnnself, besides his 
unquestioned supremacy as a novelist, a laborious and 
able workman in three other departments of literary 
labor, — reporting, editing, and biography. The exer- 
tion thus invested was intense as welh as enjoyable; 
for no quality of genius is more invariable than the in- 
tensity which marks its activity. No human standard 
of measurement can estimate the total of labor repre- 
sented by the twenty volumes, or thereabouts, which 
the young man of twenty-nine had produced in six 
years. The very penmanship of so many pages is no 
inconsiderable accumulation of labor. The contrivance 
of all these stories, the adaptation to them of the char- 
acters and groups supplied by the mind, the shaping-out 
of plot and dialogue, situation and catastrophe, consti- 
tute another far higher and immeasurably greater body 
of labor ; and behind all these was that vast mass 
of seeing, understanchng, and remembering, which may 
be called the professional training and experience of the 
author, and which was really the whole of his past life, 
including both the circumstances of his own home and 
social position, and the extraordinary series of researches 
and studies that he was always making into the actuali- 
ties of the humanity around him. The mere quantity 
of labor involved in all this, leaving its quality out of 
the question, and treating it merely as an enterprise in 
acquiring and recording knowledge, is something tre- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 179 

mendoiis. The higher mental operations are not less 
exhausting, but more so, than the lower ; and it is not 
wonderful, but natural, that by this time a vacation was 
necessary even to this vividly-energetic, swift, and en- 
during organism." 

Therefore Mr. Dickens decided to visit America, 
and embarked with his wife in January, 1842, for 

" The land of the free, and the home of the brave." 

They reached Boston on the 22d ; went by New York 
to Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond ; then by 
York, Penn., and Pittsburg, down the Ohio to Cincin- 
nati, Cairo, and St. Louis ; thence back to Cincinnati, 
northward to the Lakes, to Niagara, and down the St. 
Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec ; and thence by Lake 
Champlain back to New York ; from which he re- em- 
barked for England, June 7 of the same year. 

Mr. Dickens was desirous of securing an international 
copyright law, in wliich he, as an author, was specially 
interested, but did not succeed. 

On his return to England, he published a book con- 
taining some account of his travels and adventures, and 
conveying his impressions of the country and its people. 
This book was received in America with great dis- 
pleasure. The popularity of the author sank far below 
any zero of agreeable measurement. All but the truly 
discriminating cried out against him ; for he assailed the 



180 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

iniquitous system of Ameiican slavery, lie exposed the 
vileness of politics and the craftiness of politicians, and he 
showed how the public press catered too often to public 
vices. Time has wiped away some of these stains from 
the brow of America; and the red hand of War has 
slain the foe of our prosperity. Slavery no longer 
exists ; and the nation confesses, by its action towards 
the black man, that the strictures of Charles Dickens 
were deserved. Yet much remains to be done before 
the land shall be free from reproach, and its people 
from objectionable habits. God speed the day when it 
shall be wholly " a nation whose God is the Lord " ! 
With all its faults, we love it ; and its truest friends 
pray for its peace and prosperity, and for the time when 
its sons and daughters in home and Church and State 
shall labor together for its permanent welfare. 

Extracts from " The American Notes " will be of in- 
terest; and the following portrays a portion of the 
voyage hither : — 

" It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my 
sleep by a dismal shriek from my wife, who demands to 
know whether there's any danger. I rouse myself, and 
look out of bed. The water-jug is plunging and leaping 
like a lively dolphin ; all the smaller articles are afloat, 
except my shoes, which are stranded on a carpet-bag 
high and dry, like a couple of coal-barges. Suddenly 
I see them spring into the air, and behold the looking- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 181 

glass, which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast upon the 
ceiling. At the same time, the door entirely disappears, 
and a new one is opened in the floor. Then I begin to 
comprehend that the state-room is standing on its head. 

" Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all 
compatible with this novel state of things, the ship 
rights. Before one can say, ' Thank Heaven ! ' she 
wrongs again. Before one can cry, ' She is wrong ! ' she 
seems to have started forward, and to be a creature ac- 
tively running of its own accord, with broken knees and 
failing legs, through every variety of hole and pitfall, 
and stumbling constantly. Before one can so much as 
wonder, she takes a high leap into the air. Before she 
has well done that, she takes a deep dive into the water. 
Before she has gained the surface, she throws a somer- 
set. The instant she is on her legs, she rushes backward. 
And so she goes on, staggering, heaving, wrestling, leap- 
ing, diving, jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling, and 
rocking, and going through all these movements, some- 
times by turns, and sometimes all together, until one 
feels disposed to roar for mercy. 

" A steward passes. ' Steward ! ' — ' Sir ? ' — ' What is 
the matter ? What do you call this ? ' — ' Rather a heavy 
sea on sir, and a head wind.' 

" A head wind ! Imagine a human face upon the 
vessel's prow, with fifteen thousand Samsons in one, 
bent upon driving her back, and hitting her exactly 
between the eyes whenever she attempts to advance an 



182 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

incli ; imagine the ship herself, with every pulse and 
artery of her huge body swollen and bursting under 
this maltreatment, sworn to go on or die ; imagine the 
wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating, all in 
furious array against her; picture the sky both dark 
and wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympathy witli the 
waves, making another ocean in the air ; add to all this 
the clattering on deck and down below, the tread of 
hurried feet, the loud, hoarse shouts of seamen, the 
gurgling in and out of water through the scuppers, with 
every now and then the striking of a heavy sea upon 
the planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound of 
thunder heard within a vault, — and there is the head 
wind of that January morning. 

" I say nothing of what may be called the domestic 
noises of the ship, — such as the breaking of glass and 
crockery, the tumbling-down of stewards, the gambols 
overhead of loose casks and truant dozens of bottled 
porter, and the very remarkable and far from exhilarat- 
ing sounds raised in their various state-rooms by the 
seventy passengers who were too ill to get up to break- 
fast, — I say nothing of them ; for, although I lay listen- 
ing to this concert for' three or four days, I don't think 
I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the 
expiration of which term I lay down again excessively 
seasick. . . . 

" It was materially assisted, I have no doubt, by a 
heavy gale of wind, which came slowly up at sunset. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 183 

when we were about ten days out, and raged with grad- 
ually-increasing fury until morning, saving that it lulled 
for an hour a little before midnight. There was some- 
thing in the unnatural repose of that hour, and in the 
after-gathering of the storm, so inconceivably awful 
and tremendous, that its bursting into full violence was 
almost a relief. 

" The laboring of the ship in the troubled sea on this 
niofht I shall never forsret. ' Will it ever be worse than 
this ? ' was a question I had often heard asked when 
every thing was sliding and bumping about, and when it 
certainly did seem difBcult to comprehend the possibility 
of any thing afloat being more disturbed, without top- 
pling over, and going down. But what the agitation of 
a steam-vessel is, on a bad winter's night in the wild 
Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination 
to conceive. To say that she is flung down on her side 
in the waves, with her masts dipping into them, and 
that, springing up again, she rolls over on the other 
side, until a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of a 
hundred great guns, and hurls her back ; that she 
stops and staggers and shivers, as though stunned, and 
then, with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts on- 
ward like a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten 
down and battered and crushed and leaped on by the 
angry sea ; that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain and 
wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery ; that 
every plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every 



184 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

drop of water in the great ocean its howling voice, — is 
nothing. To say that all is grand, and all appalling and 
horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words cannot 
express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream 
can call it up again in all its fuiy, rage, and passion. 

" And 3'et, in the very midst of these terrors, I was 
placed in a situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even 
then I had as strong a sense of its absurdity as I have 
now, and could no more help laughing than I can at 
any other comical incident happening under circum- 
stances the most favorable to its enjoyment. About 
midnight, we shipped a sea, which forced its way through 
the skylights, burst open the doors above, and came 
raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin, to the 
"unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little Scotch 
lady, Avho, by the way, had previously sent a message 
to the captain by the stewardess, requesting him, with 
her compliments, to have a steel conductor immediately 
attached to the top of every mast, and to the chimney, 
in order that the ship might not be struck by lightning. 
They, and the handmaid before mentioned, being in such 
ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew what to do with 
them, I naturally bethought myself of some restorative 
or comfortable cordial ; and, nothing better occurring to 
me at the moment than hot brandy and water, I pro- 
cured a tumblerful without delay. It being impossible 
to stand or sit without holding on, they were all heaped 
together in one corner of a long sofa, — a fixture ex- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 185 

tending entirely across the cabin, — where they clung to 
each other in momentary expectation of being drowned. 
When I approached this place with my specific, and 
was about to administer it, with many conciliatory ex- 
pressions, to the nearest sufferer, what was my dismay 
to see them all roll slowly down to the other end ! And 
when I staggered to that end, and held out the glass 
once more, how immensely baffled were my good inten- 
tions by the ship giving another lurch, and their all 
rolling back again ! I suppose I dodged them up and 
down this sofa for at least a quarter of an hour, without 
reaching them once ; and, by the time I did catch them, 
the brandy and water was diminished, by constant 
spilling, to a teaspoonful. To complete the group, it is 
necessary to recognize in this disconcerted dodger an 
individual very pale from sea-sickness, who had shaved 
his beard and brushed his hair last at Liverpool, and 
whose only articles of dress (linen not included) were 
a pair of dreadnought trousers, a blue jacket formerly 
admired upon the Thames at Richmond, no stockings, 
and one slipper. 

" Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship 
next morning, which made bed a practical joke, and 
getting up, by any process short of falling out, an im- 
possibility, I say nothing ; but any thing like the utter 
dreariness and desolation that met my eyes when I lit- 
erally ' tumbled up ' on deck, at noon, I never saw. Ocean 
and sky were all of one dull, heavy, uniform lead-color. 



186 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

There was no extent of prospect, even over the dreary 
waste that lay around us ; for the sea ran high, and the 
horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop. Viewed 
from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it would have 
been imposing and stupendous, no doubt ; but, seen 
from the wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one 
giddily and painfully. In the gale of last night, the life- 
boat had been crushed by one blow of the sea, like a 
walnut-shell ; and there it hung dangling in the air, a 
mere fagot of crazy boards. The planking of the paddle- 
boxes had been torn sheer away. The wheels were ex- 
posed and bare ; and they whirled and dashed their 
spray about the decks at random. Chimney white with 
crusted salt, topmast struck, storm-sails set, rigging 
all knotted, tangled, wet, and drooping, — a gloomier 
picture it would be hard to look upon." 

Mr. Dickens touched Boston first, and, of course, vis- 
ited Boston's famous institutions, — among them that 
for the blind, at South Boston, which Avas then, as now, 
presided over by his personal friend, that world -re- 
nowned philanthropist, Dr. Samuel G. Howe. Mr. 
Dickens says, — 

" I went to see this place one very fine winter morn- 
ing, an Italian sky above, and the air so clear and bright 
on every side, that even my eyes, which are none of the 
best, could follow the minute lines and scraps of tracery 



CHARLES DICKENS. 187 

in distant buildings. Like most other public institutions 
in America, of the same class, it stands a mile or two 
without the town, in a cheerful, healthy spot ; and is an 
airy, spacious, handsome edifice. It is built upon a 
height commanding the harbor. When I paused for 
a moment at the door, and marked how fresh and free 
the whole .scene was, — what sparkling bubbles glanced 
upon the waves, and welled up every moment to the 
surface, as though the world below, like that above, 
were radiant with the bright day, and gushing over in 
its fulness of light ; when I gazed from sail to sail away 
upon a ship at; sea, a tiny speck of shining white, the only 
cloud upon the still, deep, distant blue, — and, turning, 
saw a blind boy with his sightless face addressed that 
wa}^, as though he, too, had some sense within him of 
the glorious distance, I felt a kind of sorrow that the 
place should be so very light, and a strange wish that 
for his sake it were darker. It was but momentary, of 
course, and a mere fancy; but I felt it keenly for all that. 
'' The children were at their daily tasks in different 
rooms, except a few who were already dismissed, and 
were at play. Here, as in many institutions, no uniform 
is worn ; and I was very glad of it for two reasons. 
Firstly, because I am sure that nothing but senseless 
custom, and want of thought, would reconcile us to the 
liveries and badc^es we are so fond of at home. Sec- 
ondl}^, because the absence of these things presents each 
child to the visitor in his or her own prox:)er character, ' 



188 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

with its individuality unimpaired, — not lost in a dull, 
ugly, monotonous repetition of the same unmeaning 
garb, Avhich is really an important consideration. The 
wisdom of encouraging a little harmless pride in per- 
sonal appearance, even among the blind, or the whimsi- 
cal absurdity of considering charity and leather breeches 
inseparable companions, as we do, requires no. comment. 

" Good order, cleanliness, and comfort pervaded every 
corner of the building. The various classes, who were 
gathered round their teachers, answered the questions 
put to them with readiness and intelligence, and in a 
spirit of cheerful contest for precedence which pleased 
me very much. Those who were at play were gleesome 
and noisy as other children. More spiritual and affec- 
tionate friendships appeared to exist among them than 
would be found among other young persons suffering 
under no deprivation ; but this I expected, and was 
prepared to find. It is a part of the great scheme of 
Heaven's merciful consideration for the afflicted. 

" In a portion of the building set apart for that pur- 
pose are workshops for blind persons whose education is 
finished, and who have acquired a trade, but who can- 
not pursue it in an ordinary manufactory, because of 
their deprivation. Several people were at work here, 
making brushes, mattresses, &c. ; and the cheerfulness, 
industry, and good order discernible in every other part 
of the building, extended to this department also. 

" On the ringing of a bell, the pupils all repaired, 



CHARLES DICKENS, 189 

without any guide or leader, to a spacious music-hall, 
where they took their seats in an orchestra erected for 
that purpose, and listened with manifest delight to a 
voluntary on the organ, played by one of themselves. 
At its conclusion, the performer, a boy of nineteen or 
twenty, gave place to a girl ; and to her accompaniment 
they all sang a hymn, and afterwards a sort of chorus. 
It was very sad to look upon and hear them, happy 
though their condition unquestionably was ; and I saw 
that one blind girl, who (being for the time deprived 
of the use of her limbs by illness) sat close beside me, 
with her face towards them, wept silently the while 
she listened. 

" It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and see 
how free they are from all concealment of what is pass- 
ing in their thoughts ; observing which, a man with his 
eyes may blush to contemplate the mask he wears. Al- 
lowing for one shade of anxious expression, which is 
never absent from their countenances, and the like of 
which we may readily detect in our own faces if we try 
to feel our way in the dark, every idea, as it rises within 
them, is expressed with the lightning's speed and Na- 
ture's truth. If the company at a rout, or drawing-room 
at court, could only for one time be as unconscious of 
the eyes upon them as blind men and women are, what 
secrets would come out ! and what a worker of hypoc- 
risy this sight, the loss of which we so much pity, would 
appear to be ! 



190 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another 
room before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb, destitute of 
smell, and nearl}^ so of taste, — before a fair young 
creature with every human faculty and hope,, and power 
of goodness and affection, enclosed within her delicate 
frame, and but one outward sense, — the sense of touch. 
There she was before me ; built up, as it were, in a mar- 
ble cell, impervious to any ray of light or particle of 
sound ; with her poor white hand peeping through a 
chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help, 
that an immortal soul might be awakened. 

" Long before I looked upon her, the help had come. 
Her face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure ; her 
hair, braided by her own hands, was bound about a head 
whose intellectual capacity and development were beau- 
tifully expressed in its graceful outline and its broad, 
open brow ; her dress, arranged by herself, was a pat- 
tern of neatness and simplicity ; the work she had knit- 
ted lay beside her ; her writing-book was on the desk 
she leaned upon. From the mournfid ruin of such be- 
reavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, 
guileless, grateful-hearted being. 

" Like other inmates of that house, she had a green 
ribbon bound round her eyelids. A doll she had dressed 
lay near upon the ground. I took it up, and saw that 
she had made a green fillet, such as she wore herself, 
and fastened it about its mimic eyes. 

"■ She was seated in a little enclosure made by school- 



CHAELES DICKENS. 191 

desks and forms, writing her daily journal. But, soon 
finishing this pursuit, she engaged in an animated com- 
munication with a teacher who sat beside her. This 
was a favorite 'mistress with the poor pupil. If she could 
see the face of her fair instructress, she would not love 
her less, I am sure." 

Dr. Howe was the good genius who unlocked the 
treasures of the mind and soul to that poor benighted 
child. As Dickens said, — 

" Well may this gentleman call that a delightful mo- 
ment, in which some distant promise of her present state 
first gleamed upon the darkened mind of Laura Bridg- 
man. Throughout his life, the recollection of that mo- 
ment will be to him a source of pure, unfading happi- 
ness ; nor will it shine least brightly on the evening of 
his days of noble usefulness. 

" The affection that exists between these two — the 
master and the pupil — is as far removed from all ordi- 
nary care and regard as the circumstances in which it 
has had its growth are apart from the common occur- 
rences of life. He is occupied now in devising means 
of imparting to her higher knowledge, and of conveying 
to her some adequate idea of the great Creator of that 
universe, in which, dark and silent and scentless though 
it be to her, she has such deep delight and glad enjo}^- 
ment. 



192 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" Ye wlio have eyes, and see not ; and have ears, and 
hear not ; ye who are as the hypocrites of sad counte- 
nances, and disfigure your faces that ye may seem unto 
men to fast, — learn healthy cheerfulness, and mild con- 
tentment from the deaf and dumb and blind ! Self- 
elected saints with gloomy brows, this sightless, care- 
less, voiceless child may teach you lessons you will do 
well to follow. Let that poor hand of hers lie gently 
on your hearts ; for there may be something in its heal- 
ing touch akin to that of the great Master, whose pre- 
cepts you misconstrue, whose lessons you pervert, of 
whose charity and sympathy with all the world not one 
among you in his daily practice knows as much as many 
of the worst among those fallen sinners to whom you 
are liberal in nothing but the preachment of perdition. 

" As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child of 
one of the attendants came running in to greet his 
father. For the moment, a child with eyes, among the 
sightless crowd, impressed me almost as painfully as the 
blind boy in the porch had done two hours ago. Ah ! 
how much brighter and more deeply blue, glowing and 
rich though it had been before, was the scene without, 
contrasting with the darkness of so many youthful lives 
within ! " 

While describing his ride to Lowell, Mr. Dickens 
paints a picture which travellers will readily recog- 
nize : — 



CHARLES DICKENS. 193 

" Except when a Lrancli-roacl joins the main one, 
there is seldom more than one track of rails ; so that 
the road is very narrow, and the view, where there is 
a deep cutting, by no means extensive : when there 
is not, the character of the scenery is always the same, 
— mile after mile of stunted trees, some hewn down by 
the axe, some blown down b}^ the wind, some half fallen, 
and resting on their neighbors, many mere logs half 
hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to spongy 
chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of minute 
fragments such as these. Each pool of stagnant water 
has its crust of vegetable rottenness : on every side, 
there are the boughs and trunks and stumps of trees in 
every possible stage of decay, decomposition, and neg- 
lect. Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an 
open country, glittering with some bright lake or pool, 
broad as many an English river, but so small here, that 
it scarcely has a name ; now catch hasty glimpses of a 
distant town, with its clean white houses and their cool 
piazzas, its prim New-England church and schoolhouse ; 
when, whi-r-r-r ! almost before you have seen them, 
comes the same dark screen, the stunted trees, the 
stumps, the logs, the stagnant water, — all so like the 
last, that you seem to have been transported back again 
by magic. 

" The train calls at stations in the woods, where the 
wild impossibility of anybody having the smallest reason 
to get out is only to be equalled by the apparently des- 

13 



194 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

perate hopelessness of there being anybody to get in. 
It rushes across the turnpike-road, where there is no 
gate, no policeman, no signal, nothing but a rough 
wooden arch, on which is painted, ' When the bell 

RINGS, LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE.' On it whilis 

headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges in 
the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the 
heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which 
intercepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly 
awakens all the slumbering echoes in the main street 
of a large town, and dashes on hap-hazard, pell-mell, 
neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road. There, 
— with mechanics working at their trades, and people 
leaning from their doors and windows, and boys flying 
kites and playing marbles, and men smoking, and women 
talking, and children crav/ling, and pigs burrowing, and 
unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to the 
very rails, — there, on, on, on, tears the mad dragon 
of an engine with its train of cars ; scattering in all 
directions a shower of burning sparks from its wood- 
fire, screeching, hissing, yelling, panting, until at last 
the thirsty monster stops beneath a covered way to 
drink, the people cluster round, and you have time to 
breathe again." 

Mr. Dickens paid due tribute to the industry, energy, 
and intelligence of the factory-operatives then in Lowell, 
most of whom were Americans. He was here in the 



CHARLES DICKENS. 195 

palmy days of " The Lowell Offering," and carried 
home with him four hundred pages of proof that the 
factory-girls of New England were both moral and 
literary. 

Of New Haven, he wrote thus : — 

" New Haven, known also as the ' City of Elms,' is a 
fine town. Many of its streets (as its alias sufficiently 
imports) are planted with rows of grand old elm-trees ; 
and the same natural ornaments surround Yale College, — 
an establishment of considerable eminence and reputation. 
The various departments of this institution are erected 
in a Ivind of park, or common, in the middle of the town, 
where they are dimly visible among the shadowing trees. 
The effect is very like that of an old cathedral-yard in 
England, and, when their branches are in full leaf, must 
be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter-time, 
these groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the 
busy streets and houses of a thriving city, have a very 
quaint appearance ; seeming to bring about a kind of 
compromise between town and country, as if each had 
met the other half-way, and shaken hands upon it ; which 
is at once novel and pleasant." 

With a natural and righteous disgust at the practice 
which Mr. Dickens so sharply reproves, and whose 
reproof the author of this volume, and every other 
true woman in the land, fully indorses, the follow- 



196 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

ing quotation is given. Said Mr. Dickens in the 

" Notes," — 

" As Washington may be called the headquarters of 
tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must 
confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of 
those two odious practices, of chewing and expecto- 
rating, began about this time to be any thing but agree- 
able, and soon became most offensive and sickening. In 
all the jDublic places of America, this filthy custom is 
recognized. In the courts of law, the judge has his spit- 
toon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his ; 
while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as 
so many men, who, in the course of nature, must desire 
to spit incessantly. In the hospitals, the students of 
medicine are requested, by notices upon the wall, to 
eject their tobacco-juice into the boxes provided for that 
purpose, and not to discolor the stairs. In public build- 
ings, visitors are implored, through the same agency, to 
squirt the essence of their quids, or ' plugs,' as I have 
heard them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of 
sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not about 
the bases of the marble columns. But, in some parts, 
this custom is inseparably mixed up with every meal and 
morning call, and with all the transactions of social life. 
The stranger who follows in the track I took myself 
will find it in its full bloom and glor}^ luxuriant in all 
its alarming recklessness, at Washington ; and let him 



CHARLES DICKENS. 197 

not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame) that 
previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The 
thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness which cannot 
be outdone. 

" On board this steamboat, there were two young 
gentlemen, with shirt-collars reversed, as usual, and 
armed with very big walking-sticks, who planted two 
seats in the middle of the deck, at a distance of some 
four paces apart, took out their tobacco-boxes, and sat 
down opposite each other to chew. In less than a quar- 
ter of an hour's time, these hopeful youths had shed 
about them on the clean boards a copious shower of 
yellow rain ; clearing, by that means, a kind of magic 
circle, Avithin whose limits no intruders dared to come, 
and which they never failed to refresh and re-refresh, 
before a spot was dry. This, being before breakfast, 
rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea ; but, looking 
attentively at one of the expectorators, I plainly saw 
that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy 
himself. A plow of delig^ht came over me at this dis- 
covery ; and as I marked his face turn paler and paler, 
and saw the ball of tobacco in his left cheek quiver with 
his suppressed agony, while yet he spat and chewed, and 
spat again, in emulation of his older friend, I could have 
fallen on his neck, and implored him to go on for hours." 

The little touches of description given by Dickens as 
he passed along by canal, and afterward by railroad, 



198 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

towards and over the Alleghanies, are worth perusal. 
He says, — 

" There was much m this mode of travelling which I 
heartily enjoyed at the time, and look back upon with 
great pleasure. Even the running-up, bare-necked, at 
five o'clock in the morning, from the tainted cabin to 
tiie dirty deck, scooping up the icy water, plunging 
one's head into it, and drawing it out all fresh and 
glowing with the cold, was a good thing. The fast, 
brisk walk upon the towing-path, between that time 
and breakfast, when every vein and artery seemed to 
tingle with health ; the exquisite beauty of the opening 
day, when light came gleaming off from every thing ; 
the lazy motion of the boat, when one lay idly on the 
deck, looking through, rather than at, the deep-blue 
sky ; the gliding-on at night, so noiselessly, past frown- 
ing hills sullen with dark trees, and sometimes angry in 
one red, burning spot high up, where unseen men lay 
crouching round a fire ; the shining-out of the bright 
stars,- undisturbed by noise of wheels or stream, or any 
other sound than the liquid rippling of the water as the 
boat went on, — all these were pure delights. 

" Then there were new settlements, and detached log- 
cabins and frame-houses, full of interest for strangers 
from an old country, — cabins with simple ovens out- 
side, made of clay ; and lodgings for the pigs nearly as 
good as many of the human quarters ; broken windows 



CHARLES DICKENS. 199 

patched with worn-out hats, old clothes, old boards, 
fragments of blankets, and paper; and home-made 
dressers standmg m the open air without the door, 
whereon was ranged the household store, not hard to, 
count, of earthen jars and pots. The eye was pained 
to see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every 
field of wheat, and seldom to lose the eternal swamp 
and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks and 
twisted branches steeped in its unwdiolesome waters. 
It was quite sad and oppressive to come upon great 
tracts where settlers had been burning down the trees, 
and where their wounded bodies lay about, like those of 
murdered creatures ; while here and there some charred 
and blackened giant reared aloft two withered arms, and 
seemed to call down curses on his foes. Sometimes, at 
night, the way wound through some lonely gorge, like 
a mountain-pass in Scotland, shining and coldly glitter- 
ing in the light of the moon, and so closed in by high, 
steep hills all round, that there seemed to be no egress, 
save through the narrower paths by which we had come, 
until one rugged hillside seemed to open, 'and, shutting 
out the moonlight as we passed into its gloomy throat, 
wrapped our new course in shade and darkness. 

" We had left Harrisburg on Friday. On Sunday 
morning, we arrived at the foot of the mountain, which 
is crossed by railroad. There are ten inclined planes ; 
five ascending, and five 6?(?scending. The carriages are 
dragged up the former, and let slowly down the latter, 



200 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

by means of stationary engines ; the comparatively level 
spaces between being traversed, sometimes by horse, and 
sometimes by engine-power, as the case demands. Oc- 
casionally, the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a 
giddy precipice ; and, looking from the carriage-Avindow, 
the traveller gazes sheer down, without a stone, or scrap 
of fence, between, into the mountain - depths below. 
The journey is very carefully made, however (only two 
carriages travelling together), and, while proper pre- 
cautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers. 
" It was very pretty, travelling thus at a rapid pace 
along the heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to 
look down iijto a valley full of light and softness ; 
catching glimpses, through the tree-tops, of scattered 
cabins ; children running to the doors ; dogs bursting 
out to bark, whom we could see without hearing ; ter- 
rified pigs scampering homewards ; families sitting out 
in their rude gardens ; cows gazing upward with a 
stupid indifference; men in their shirt- sleeves look- 
ing on at their unfinished houses, planning out to- 
morrow's work ; and we riding onward, high above 
them, like a whirlwind. It was amusing, too, when we 
had dined, and rattled down a steep pass, having no 
other moving-power than the weight of the carriages 
themselves, to see the engine, released long after us, 
come buzzing down alone, like a great insect ; its back 
of green and gold so shining in the sun, that, if it had 
spread a pair of wings, and soared away, no one would 



CHARLES DICKENS. 201 

have had occasion, as I fancied, for the least surprise. 
But it stopped short of us, in a very business-like man- 
ner, when .we reached the canal, and, before we left the 
wharf, went panting up this hill again, with the passen- 
gers who had waited our arrival for the means of trav- 
ersing the road by which we had come." 

Mr. Dickens was not favorably impressed with the 
Mississippi ; and his description is fraught with horror, 
and would drive away from the great river those who 
wished to see only pleasant sights. He says, — 

" Nor was the scenery, as we approached the junction 
of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, at all inspiriting in 
its influence. The trees were stunted in their growth ; 
the banks were low and flat ; the settlements and log- 
cabins fewer in number, their inhabitants more wan 
and wretched, than any we had encountered yet. No 
songs of birds were in the air, no pleasant scents, no 
moving lights and shadows from swift-passing clouds. 
Hour after hour, the changeless glare of the hot, unwink- 
ing sky, shone upon the same monotonous objects. Hour 
after hour, the river rolled along as wearily and slowly 
as the time itself. 

" At length, upon the morning of the third day, we 
arrived at a spot so much more desolate than any we 
had yet beheld, that the forlornest places we had passed 
were, in comparison with it, full of interest. At the 



202 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

junction of the two rivers, on ground so flat and low 
and marshy, that, at certain seasons of the year, it is 
inundated to the house-tops, Hes a breeding - place for 
fever, ague, and death ; vaunted in England as a mine 
of golden hope, and speculated in, on the faith of mon- 
strous representations, to many people's ruin. A dismal 
swamp, on which the half -built houses rot away, cleared 
here and there for the space of a few yards, and teem- 
ing then with rank, unwholesome vegetation, in whose 
baleful shade the wretched wanderers who are tempted 
hither droop and die, and lay their bones ; the hateful 
Mississippi circling and eddying before it, and turning 
ofp upon its southern course, a slimy monster hideous to 
behold ; a hotbed of disease ; an ugly sepulchre ; a grave 
uncheered by any gleam of promise ; a place without 
one single quality in earth or air or water to commend 
it, — such is this dismal Cairo. 

"But what words shall describe the Mississippi, the 
great ' Father of Rivers,' who (praise be to Heaven !) has 
no young children like him ! An enormous ditch, some- 
times two or three miles wide, running liquid mud six 
miles an hour ; its strong and frothy current choked and 
obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole forest- 
trees, — now twining themselves together in great rafts, 
from the interstices of which a sedgy, lazy foam works 
up to float upon the water's top ; now rolling past, like 
monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like mat- 
ted hair ; now glancing singly by, like giant leeches ; 



CHARLES DICKENS. 208 

and now writliing round and round in llie vortex of 
some small whirlpool, like wounded snakes ; — the banks 
low ; the trees dwarfish ; the marshes swarming with 
frogs ; the wretched cabins few and far apart, their in- 
mates hollow-cheeked and pale ; the weather very hot ; 
mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of 
the boat ; mud and slime on every thing ; nothing pleas- 
ant in its aspect but the harmless lightning, which flick- 
ers every night upon the dark horizon. 

" For two days, we toiled up this foul stream, striking 
constantly against the floating timber, or stopj)ing to 
avoid those more dangerous obstacles, the snags, or saw- 
yers, which are the hidden trunks of trees that have 
their roots below the tide. When the nights are ver}^ 
dark, the lookout stationed in the head of the boat 
knows by the rippling of the water if any great impedi- 
ment be near at hand, and rings a bell beside him, which 
is the signal for the engine to be stopped : but always 
in the night this bell has work to do ; and, after every 
ring, there comes a blow which renders it no easy matter 
to remain in bed. 

'^ The decline of day here was very gorgeous, tinging 
the firmament deeply with red and gold up to the very 
keystone of the arch above us. As the sun went down 
behhid the bank, the slightest blades of grass upon it 
seemed to become as distinctly visible as the arteries in 
the skeleton of a leaf ; and when, as it slowly sank, the 
red and golden bars upon the water grew dimmer and 



204 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

dimmer yet, as if they were sinking too, and all the 
glowing colors of departing day paled, inch by inch, 
before the sombre night, the scene became a thousand 
times more lonesome and more dreary than before, and 
all its influence darkened with the sky. 

'' We drank the muddy water of this river while we 
were upon it. It is considered wholesome by the na- 
tives, and is something more opaque than gruel." 

But one thing, at least, Mr. Dickens enjoyed as well 
as the Americans do, — and that was our cataract. From 
'' The Notes," one would judge that he did not visit Goat 
Island ; and one cannot but regret that he did not, 
and there view the marvellous rapids, whose grandeur 
is scarcely surpassed by that of the great falls them- 
selves. Mr. Dickens thus refers to his visit : — 

" It was a miserable day,^ — chilly and raw, a damp mist 
falling, and the trees in that northern region quite bare 
and wintry. Whenever the train halted, I listened for 
the roar, and was constantly straining my eyes in the 
direction where I knew the falls must be from seeing 
the river rolling on towards them ; every moment ex- 
pecting to behold the spra}^ Within a few minutes of 
our stopping, not before, I saw two great white clouds 
rising up slowly and majestically from the depths of the 
earth : that was all. At length we alighted ; and then, 
for the first time, I heard the mighty rush of water, and 
felt the ground tremble underneath my feet. 



CHARLES. DICKENS. 205 

" The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain 
and half-melted ice. I hardly know how I got down ; 
but I was soon at the bottom, and climbing, with two 
English officers who were crossing, and had joined me, 
over some broken rocks, deafened by the noise, half 
blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. We were at 
the foot of the American Fall. I could see an immense 
torrent of water tearing headlong down from some great 
height, but had no idea of shape or situation or any 
thing but vague immensity. 

" When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and 
were crossing the swollen river immediately before both 
cataracts, I began to feel what it was ; but I was in a 
manner stunned, and unable to comprehend the vastness 
of the scene. It was not until I came on Table Rock, 
and looked, — great Heaven, on what a fall of bright 
green water ! — that it came upon me in its full might 
and majesty. 

Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was 
standing, the first effect, and the enduring one, — in- 
stant and lasting, — of the tremendous spectacle, was 
I)eace, — peace of mind, tranquillity, calm recollections of 
the dead, great thoughts of eternal rest and happiness, 
nothing of gloom or terror. Niagara was at once 
stamped upon my heart an image of beauty, to re- 
main there, changeless and indelible, until its pulses 
cease to beat forever. 

" Oh ! how the strife and trouble of daily life receded 



206 LIFE AND yniTINGS OF 

from my view, and lessened in the distance, during 
the ten memorable days we passed on that enchanted 
ground ! What voices spoke from out the thundering 
water! what faces, faded from the earth, looked out 
upon me from its gleaming depths ! what heavenly 
promise glistened in those angels' tears, the drops of 
many hues, that showered around, and twined them- 
selves about the gorgeous arches which the changing 
rainbows made ! 

" I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian 
side, whither 1 had gone at first. I never crossed the 
river again : for I knew there were people on the other 
shore ; and, in such a place, it is natural to shun strange 
company. To wander to and fro all da}^ and see the 
cataracts from all points of view ; to stand upon the 
edge of the great Horseshoe Fall, marking the hurried 
water gathering strength as it approached the verge, yet 
seeming, too, to pause before it shot into the gulf below ; 
to gaze from the river's level up at the torrent as it came 
streaming down ; to climb the neighboring heights, and 
watch it through the trees, and see the wreathing water 
in the rapids hurrying on to take its fearful plunge ; to 
linger in the shadow of the solemn rocks three miles 
below, watching the river, as, stirred by no visible cause, 
it heaved and eddied, and awoke the echoes, being trou- 
bled yet far down beneath the surface by its giant leap ; 
to have Niagara before me, lighted by the sun and by 
the moon, red in the day's decline, and gray as even- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 207 

ing slowly fell upon it ; to look upon it every day, and 
wake up in the night, and hear its ceaseless voice, — this 
was enough. 

"I think in every quiet season now, still do those 
waters roll and leap and roar and tumble all day long ; 
still are the rainbows spanning them a hundred feet 
below ; still, when the sun is on them, do they shine 
and glow like molten gold ; still, when the day is 
gloomy, do they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away 
like the front of a great chalk-cliff, or roll down the rock 
like dense white smoke : but always does the mighty 
stream appear to die as it comes down ; and always from 
its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of 
spray and mist which is never laid, which has haunted 
this place with the same dread solemnity since darkness 
brooded on the deep, and that first flood before the 
Deluge — light — came rushing on creation at the word 
of God. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



CHRISTMAS CAROLS. 



Martin Chuzzlewit. — Pictures from Italy.— First Carol. — Tiny Tim. — TheChiraes. 
— Cricket on the Hearth. 



' O lovely voices of the sky, 

"Wliich hymned the Saviour's birth 1 
Are ye not singing still on high, 

Ye that sang, ' Peace on earth ' ? 
To us yet speak the strains 

Wherewith, in times gone by, 
Ye blessed the Syrian swains, 
O voices of the sky ! '" 

Mrs. Hemans. 



li. 14 



Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good-will toward men."- Lukk 




OLLOWING his ''Notes," on his return 
from America, Mr. Dickens wrote a novel 
called " Martin Chuzzlewit," which, like 
" The Notes," created great excitement 
on this side of the water ; and they who 
had been fulsome in their adulation of the novelist were 
extremely indignant that he should repay, as they felt, 
their land welcome with abuse and sarcasm. This book 
appeared in numbers during 1844. A writer in " The 
Illustrated London News" thinks that Mr. Dickens's 

208 



CHARLES DICKENS. 209 

*' method of composing and publishing his tales in 
monthly parts, or sometimes in weekly parts, aided the 
experience of this immediate personal companionship be- 
tween the writer and the reader. It was just as if we 
received a letter or a visit, at regular intervals, from a 
kindly observant gossip, who was in the habit of watch- 
ing the domestic life of the Nicklebys or the Chuzzlewits, 
and who would let us know from time to time how they 
were going on. There was no assumption, in general, of 
having a complete and finished history to deliver : he 
came at fixed periods, merely to report what he had per- 
ceived since his last budget was opened for us. The 
course of his narrative seemed to run on, somehow, al- 
most simultaneously with the real progress of events, only 
keeping a little behind, so that he might have time to 
write down whatever happened, and to tell us. This 
periodical and piece-meal form of publication, being at- 
tended by a fragmentary manner of composition, was not 
at all favorable to the artistic harmony of his work as a 
whole. But few persons ever read any of Dickens's sto- 
ries as a whole for the first time, because every one was 
eager to enjoy the parts as they were printed ; going on a 
twelve-month or twenty months in due succession, and 
growing in popularity as the pile of them increased. The 
obvious effect was to inspire all his constant readers — say 
a million or two — with a sense of habitual dependence 
on their contemporary, the man Charles Dickens, for a 
continued supply of the entertainment which he alone 

14 



210 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

could furnish. He was personally indispensable to 
them, as a favorite actor might be to the inveterate 
playgoers of a former age, who lived upon their Gar- 
rick or their Kemble. If each of his stories had ap- 
peared complete in three octavo volumes, with the lapse 
of a couple of years between one work and another, the 
feeling of continual dependence on the living author 
would have been less prevalent among us. 

" But it was not by dint of this mechanical contrivance 
of publishing, and the corresponding talent of quick and 
manifold invention, presenting novel scenes and inci- 
dents, with a crowd of new figures, in each section of a 
story, that Charles Dickens obtained his immense com- 
mand over the minds of the English people. Other 
novelists have ,shov/n the same power of inventing a 
multiplicity of incidents to strike the fancy, and filling 
every corner with countless persons or personal names, 
intended to represent the diversities of human life and 
character. The result is bewildering and fatiguing, if 
we should attempt to read any of those second-rate 
serial novels as a connected story. They found accept- 
ance in monthly morsels ; there was some vitality in 
their scattered limbs : but, when the body is put to- 
gether, we find it is dead, so that it lies shut between 
the boards of the bound volume, as though enclosed in a 
cofQn, extinct to the end of time. Such would have 
been the fate, likewise, of these stories of Dickens's, if 
he had been merely a writer of extraordinary talent and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 211 

skill ; but lie was also a man of genius, — let us say, a 
prose poet. The genius of the poet, in which term we 
beg leave to include that of the genuine humorist, who 
is equally the man of imagination, cannot die, and be 
shut up in a cofQn, and so buried and forgotten. Try 
to dispose of your Shakspeare in that manner ! The 
forms of poetry may pass out of fashion ; they may 
change or perish ; they may have been imperfect at 
their best, for they were borrowed from the custom of 
the day : but the spirit of poetry is immortal. And we 
reckon true humor as a peculiar exhibition of this spirit ; 
and we esteem Dickens, next after Shakspeare, as the 
greatest of English humorists, — that is to say, with ref- 
erence to literary history, the greatest of all humorists ; 
for none of the foreigners, ancient or modern, — Aris- 
tophanes, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, or Jean Paul, 
— have come near Shakspeare in this faculty, though 
possessing it in a large measure. That none of the 
' English humorists of the eighteenth century ' — not 
even Swift or Fielding, much less Smollett or Sterne — 
is to be compared with Dickens in this respect, we be- 
lieve Thackeray himself would have been ready to 
admit. Hogarth, if the two arts of painting and novel- 
writing allow their comparison, may be deemed a pre- 
cursor of Dickens. Many of our poets, from Chaucer 
onwards, — we cannot, indeed, name Milton or Words- 
worth, but Robert Burns and Walter Scott on the north 
side of the Tweed, — have been richly endowed with 



212 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

humor. It is a British or English gift ; and Washing- 
ton Irving has shown that it flourishes in transplantation 
to America. With the spirit of sympathetic fun and 
genial caprice is allied the s^^ecial power of imagination 
that enters into the motives of eccentric characters, and 
of whimsical or absurd actions and behavior. This be- 
longs to poetry, and chiefly to dramatic poetry, quite 
as much as those other special faculties of imagination 
which go to the conception and representation of ex- 
alted passions, or to the ideal combination of sublime 
and beautiful forms. Shakspeare's clowns, and his fool- 
ish varlets or blundering louts, are, equally with his 
heroes, the creation of a great poet. Shall we not say 
the same of Pickwick, of Sam Weller, of Pecksniff, of 
Mrs. Gamp, and of many other queer characters which 
only a mighty creative imagination could have formed ? 

" His genius was the gift of Nature ; but, for his art 
as a writer, he seems to have early studied two of the 
best examples in our language, — Henry Fielding and 
Washington Irving. The mock-heroic strain of his 
preambles to many chapters of ' Pickwick,' ' Nicholas 
Nickleby,' and ' Martin Chuzzlewit,' was tuned in the 
key of similar diversions attending the history of Tom 
Jones ; and the shrewd, sly commentary, enlivened by 
a variety of playful fancies and whimsical conceits, with 
which Dickens peeps into the minutest deftails of scenery 
and costume, reminds us of ' The Sketch Book,' and of 



CHARLES DICKENS. 213 

' Bracebriclge Hall.' His propensity to indulge in the 
use of irony, almost too persistently, -and sometimes to 
dwell upon a single witty caprice, turned all manner of 
ways, through several paragraphs or pages, is one of those 
splendid faults of excess from which even Shakspeare 
is not wholly free. We know what was said of him who 
had never blotted out a line of his writing, ' Oh that 
he had blotted out a thousand ! ' Dickens, if we re- 
member rightly, made an express acknowledgment, 
when he first visited America, of his obligations to 
Washington Irving as a literary model ; and he could 
scarcely have chosen a better, for style, tone, and man- 
ner, amongst the prose- writers of the age. The inclina- 
tion, encouraged by Thackeray, to go farther back — 
namely, to Swift and Addison — for patterns of good 
English thinking and writing, has nearly worn itself 
out ; and we again recognize in the best of our nine- 
teenth-century authors a style of greater energy and 
capacity than that of the eighteenth, with equal clear- 
ness and easy grace. Dickens possessed as full command 
of all the resources of our language as Ruskin ; and he 
could, when it suited his purpose, write with as much 
force and precision as Macaulay. A volume of ' elegant 
extracts ' might be gathered from his works to exemplify 
the rules of idiomatic English prose-composition." 

From " Martin Chuzzlewit," a few extracts are here 
given. The following presents a vivid picture of an 
autumnal sunset and the autumn breeze : — 



214 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" It was pretty late in the autumn of the year, when 
the declining sun," struggling through the mist which 
had obscured it all day, looked brightly down upon a 
little Wiltshire village, wkhin an easy journey of the 
fair old town of Salisbury. 

" Like a sudden flash of memory or spirit kindling up 
the mind of an old man, it shed a glory upon the scene, 
in which its departed youth and freshness seemed to live 
again. The wet grass sparkled in the light ; the scanty 
patches of verdure in the hedges — Avhere a few green 
twigs yet stood together bravely, resisting to the last 
the tyranny of nipping winds and early frosts — took 
heart, and brightened up ; the stream, which had been 
dull and sullen all day long, broke out into a cheerful 
smile ; the birds began to chirp and twitter on the naked 
boughs, as though the hopeful creatures half believed 
that winter had gone by, and spring had come already ; 
the vane upon the tapering spire of the old church 
ghstened from its lofty station in sympathy with the 
general gladness ; and from the ivy-shaded windows 
such gleams of light shone back upon the glowing sky, 
that it seemed as if the quiet buildings were the hoard- 
ing-place of twenty summers, and all their ruddiness 
and warmth were stored within. 

^' Even those tokens of the season which emphatically 
whispered of the coming winter graced the landscape, 
and, for the moment, tinged its livelier features with no 
oppressive air of sadness. The fallen leaves, with which 



CHARLES DICKENS. 215 

the ground was strewn, gave forth a pleasant fragrance, 
and, subdumg ail harsh sounds of distant feet and wheels, 
created a repose in gentle unison with the light scatter- 
ing of seed hither and thither by the distant husband- 
man, and with the noiseless passage of the plough as it 
turned up the rich brown earth, and wrought a graceful 
pattern in the stubbled fields. On the motionless 
branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clus- 
ters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where 
the fruits were jewels ; others, stripped of all their gar- 
niture, stood, each the centre of its little heajp of bright 
red leaves, watching their slow decay ; others again, 
still wearing theirs, had them all crunched and craclded 
up, as though they had been burnt ; about the stems of 
some were piled in ruddy mounds the apples they had 
borne that year; while others (hardy evergreens this 
class) showed somewhat stern and gloomy in their vigor, 
as charged by Nature with the admonition, that it is not 
to her more sensitive and joyous favorites she grants the 
longest term of life. Still, athwart their darker boughs, 
the sunbeams struck out paths of deeper gold ; and the 
red light, mantling in among their swarthy branches, 
used them as foils to set its brightness off, and aid the 
lustre of the dying day. 

" A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun 
went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud 
'which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on 
wall, and battlement on battlement ; the light was all 



216 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

withdrawn ; the shining church turned cold and dark ; 
the stream forgot to smile ; the birds were silent ; and 
the gloom of winter dwelt on every thing. 

" An evening wind uprose too ; and the slighter 
branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton 
dances, to its moaning music. The witliering leaves, no 
longer quiet, hurried to and fro in search of shelter from 
its chill pursuit ; the laborer unyoked his horses, and, 
with head bent down, trudged briskly home beside 
them ; and from the cottage-windows lights began to 
glance and wink upon the darkening fields. 

" Then the village forge came out in all its bright 
importance. The lusty bellows roared, ' Ha, ha ! ' to the 
clear fire, which roared in turn, and bade the shining 
sparks dance gayly to the merry clinking of the hammers 
on the anvil. The gleaming iron, in its emulation, 
sparkled too, and shed its red-hot gems around pro- 
fusely. The strong smith and his men dealt such strokes 
upon their work as made even the melancholy night 
rejoice, and brought a glow into its dark face as it hov- 
ered about the door and windows, peeping curiously in 
above the shoulders of a dozen loungers. As to this 
idle company, there they stood, spell-bound by the 
place, and, casting now and then a glance upon the 
darkness in their rear, settled their lazy elbows more at 
ease upon the sill, and leaned a little further in, no 
more disposed to tear themselves away than if they had 
been born to cluster round the blazing hearth like so 
many crickets. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 217 

'' Out upon the angry wind ! how, from sighing, it 
began to bluster round the merry forge, banging at the 
wicket, and grumbling in the chimney, as if it bullied 
the jolly bellows for doing any thing to order. And 
what an impotent swaggerer it Avas too, for all its noise ! 
for, if it had any influence on that hoarse companion, it 
was but to make him roar his cheerful song the louder, 
and, by consequence, to make the fire burn the brighter, 
and the sparks to dance more gayly yet : at length, they 
whizzed so madly round and round, that it was too much 
for such a surly wind to bear : so off it flew with a howl, 
giving the old sign before the ale-house door such a cuff 
as it went, that the Blue Dragon was more rampant than 
usual ever afterwards, and, indeed, before Christmas, 
reared clean out of its crazy frame. 

" It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go 
wrealdng its vengeance on such poor creatures as the 
fallen leaves ; but this wind, happening to come up with 
a great heap of them just after venting its humor on the 
insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them, that 
they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling 
over each other, whirhng round and round upon their 
thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing 
all manner of extraordinary gambols in the extremity 
of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious 
furyf^r, not content with driving them abroad, it 
charged small parties of them, and hunted them into the 
wheelwright's saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers 



218 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

in the j'arcl, and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it 
looked for them underneath ; and, when it did meet with 
any, whew ! how it drove them on, and followed at their 
heels ! 

" The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, 
and a giddy chase it was ; for they got into unfrequented 
places, where there was no outlet, and where their pur- 
suer kept them eddying round and round at his pleasure ; 
and they crept under the eaves of houses ; and clung 
tightly to the sides of hay-ricks, like bats ; and tore in 
at open chamber- windows ; and cowered close to hedges ; 
and, in short, went anywhere for safety. But the oddest 
feat they achieved was to take advantage of the sudden 
opening of Mr. Pecksniff's front-door, to dash wildly 
into his passage, whither the wind, following close upon 
them, and finding the back-door open, incontinently 
blew out the lighted candle held by Miss Pecksniff, and 
slammed the front-door against Mr. Pecksniff, who was 
at that moment entering, with such violence, that, in the 
twinkling of an eye, he lay on his back at the bottom of 
the steps. Being by this time weary of such trifling per- 
formances, the boisterous rover hurried away rejoicing, 
roaring over moor and meadow, hill and flat, until it got 
out to sea, where it met with other winds similarly dis- 
posed, and made a night of it." 

A fine word-picture, too, is the opening of that chap- 
ter, " the burden whereof is, ' Hail, Columbia ! ' " 



CHARLES DICKENS. 219 

Thus it reads : — 

" A dark and dreary night ; people nestling in their 
beds, or circling late about the fire ; Want, colder than 
Charity, shivering at the street-corners ; church-towers 
humming with the faint vibration of their own tongues, 
but newly resting from the ghostly preachment ' One ! ' 
the earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of 
3^esterday ; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of 
funeral-feathers, waving sadly to and fro, — all hushed, all 
noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds that 
skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as, creep- 
ing after them upon the ground, it stops to listen, and 
goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows, like a 
savage on the trail. 

"Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly? If, 
like guilty spirits, they repair to some dread conference 
with powers like themselves, in what wild regions do 
the elements hold council, or where unbend in terrible 
disport ? 

" Here, free from that cramped prison called the 
earth, and out upon the waste of waters. Here, roar- 
ing, raging, shrieking, howling, all night long. Hither 
come the sounding voices from the caverns on the coast 
of that small island, sleeping, a thousand miles away, 
so quietly in the midst of angry waves ; and hither, to 
meet them, rush the blasts from unknown desert places 
of the world. Here, in the fury of their unchecked 
liberty, they storm and buifet with each other until the 



220 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

sea, lashed into passion like their own, leaps up in 
ravings mightier than theirs, and the whole scene is 
madness. 

" On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space, 
roll the long, heaving billows. Mountains and caves are 
here, and yet are not ; for what is now the one is now 
the other ; then all is but a boiling heap of rushing 
water. Pursuit and flight, and mad return of wave on 
wave, and savage struggle, ending in a spouting-up of 
foam that whitens the black night ; incessant change 
of place and form and hue, constancy in nothing, but 
eternal strife ; on, on, on, they roll, and darker grows 
the night, and louder howls the wind, and more clam- 
orous and fierce become the million voices in the sea, 
when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm, ' A ship ! ' 

" Onward she comes, in gallant combat with the ele- 
ments, her tall masts trembling, and her timbers starting 
on the strain ; onward she comes, now high upon the 
curhng billows, now low down in the hollows of the 
sea, as hiding for the moment from its fury ; and every 
storm-voice in the air and water cries more loudly yet, 
' A ship ! ' 

" Still she comes striving on ; and, at her boldness and 
the spreading cry, the angry waves rise up above each 
other's hoary heads to look ; and round about the vessel, 
far as the mariners on the decks can pierce into the 
gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down, 
and starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in 



CHARLES DICKENS. 221 

dreadful curiosity. High over lier tliey break, and 
round her surge and roar, and, giving place to others, 
moaningly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in 
their baffled anger. Still she comes onward bravely; 
and thousfh the eag^er multitude crowd thick and fast 
upon her all the night, and dawn of day discovers the 
untiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in an 
eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim 
lights burning in her hull, and people there asleep ; as 
if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and 
chink, and no drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank 
to cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable depths 
below." 

Sairey Gamp appears in " Martin Chuzzlewit ; " and 
as the author of this memorial volume had the great 
pleasure of hearing Mr. Dickens read this himself in 
Tremont Temple, Boston, a place is here assigned to this 
humorous sketch with more than usual satisfaction. 

" Mr. Pecksniff, in the innocence of his heart, applied 
himself to the knocker ; but, at the first double knock, 
every window in the street became alive with female 
heads ; and, before he could repeat the performance, 
whole troops of married ladies (some about to trouble 
Ij.lrs. Gamp themselves very shortly) came flocking 
round the steps, all crying out with one accord, and 
with uncommon interest, ' Knock at the winder, sir, 



222 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

knock at the winder! Lord bless you, don't lose no 
more time than you can help : knock at the winder ! ' 

" Acting upon this suggestion, and borrowing th6 
driver's whip for the purpose, Mr. Pecksniff soon made 
a commotion among the first-floor flower-pots, and 
roused Mrs. Gamp, whose voice — to the great satisfac- 
tion of the matrons — Avas heard to say, ' I'm coming.' 

" ' He's as pale as a muffin,' said one lady, in allusion 
to Mr. Pecksniff. 

" ' So he ought to be, if he's the feelings of a man,' 
observed another. 

" A third lady (with her arms folded) said she wished 
he had chosen any other time for fetching Mrs. Gamp ; 
but it always happened so with her. 

" It gave Mr. Pecksniff much uneasiness to find, from 
these remarks, that he was supposed to have come to 
Mrs. Gamp upon an errand touching, not the close of 
life, but the other end. Mrs. Gamp herself was under 
the same impression ; for, throwing open the window, 
she cried behind the curtains, as she hastily attired her- 
self, — 

" ' Is it Mrs. Perkins ? ' 

" ' No ! ' returned Mr. Pecksniff sharply. ' Nothing 
of the sort.' 

" ' What, Mr. Whilks ! ' cried Mrs. Gamp. ' Don't 
say it's j^ou, Mr. Whilks, and that poor creetur Mrs. 
Whilks with not even a pincushion ready. Don't say 
it'syou, Mr. Whilks!' 



CHARLES DICKENS. 223 

" ' It isn't Mr. Wliilks,' said Pecksniff. ' I don't know 
the man. Nothing of the kind. A gentleman is dead ; 
and, some person being wanted in the house, you have 
been recommended by Mr. Mould the undertaker.' 

" As she was by this time in a condition to appear, 
Mrs. Gamp, who had a face for all occasions, looked out 
of the window with her mourning-countenance, and 
said she would be down directly. But the matrons 
took it very ill, that Mr. Pecksniff 's mission was of so 
unimportant a kind : and the lady with her arms folded 
rated him in good round terms, signifying that she would 
be glad to know what he meant by terrifying delicate 
females ' with his corpses ; ' and giving it as her opinion 
that he was quite ugly enough to know better. The 
other ladies were not at all behindhand in expressing 
similar sentiments ; and the children, of whom some 
scores had now collected, hooted and defied Mr. Peck- 
sniff quite savagely. So, when Mrs. Gamp appeared, 
the unoffending gentleman was glad to hustle her with 
very little ceremony into the cabriolet, and drive off, 
overwhelmed with popular execration. 

" Mrs. Gamp had a large bundle with her, a pair of 
pattens, and a species of gig-umbrella ; the latter ar- 
ticle in color like a faded leaf, except where a circular 
patch of a lively blue had been dexterously let in at the 
top. She was much flurried by the haste she had made, 
and labored under the most erroneous views of cabrio- 
lets, which she appeared to confound with mail-coaches 



224 LIFE AND WKITIN.GS OF 

or stage-wagons ; inasmuch as she was constantly en- 
deavoring for the first half-mile to force her luggage 
through the little front-window, and clamoring to the 
driver to ' put it in the boot.' When she was disabused 
of this idea, her whole being resolved itself into an ab- 
sorbing anxiety about her pattens, with which she played 
innumerable games at quoits on Mr. Pecksniff's legs. 
It was not until they were close upon the house of 
mourning, that she had enough composure to observe, — 

'' ' And so the gentleman's dead, sir ? Ah ! The more's 
the pity.' She didn't even know his name. ' But it's 
what we must all come to. It's as certain as being born, 
except that we can't make our calculations as exact. 
Ah ! Poor dear ! ' 

" She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a 
husky voice and a moist eye, which she had a remarka- 
ble power of turning up, and only showing the white 
of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble 
to look over herself, if one may say so, at those to 
whom she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, 
rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to 
correspond. In these dilapidated articles of dress, she 
had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on 
such occasions as the present ; for this at once expressed 
a decent amount of veneration for the deceased, and in- 
vited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit 
of weeds, — an appeal so frequently successful, that the 
very fetch and ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 225 

might be seen hanging up, any hour in the day, in at 
least a dozen of the second-hand-clothes shops about 
Holborn. The face of Mrs. Gamp — the nose in par- 
ticular — was somewhat red and swollen; and it was 
difficult to enjoy her society without becoming conscious 
of a smell of spirits. Like most persons who have at- 
tained to great eminence in their profession, she took 
to hers very kindly ; insomuch, that, setting aside her 
natural predilections as a woman, she went to a lying-in 
or a laying-out with equal zest and relish. 

" ' Ah ! ' repeated Mrs. Gamp ; for it was always a 
safe sentiment in cases of mourning, — 'ah, dear ! When 
Gamp was summoned to his long home, and I see him a- 
Ij'ing in Guy's Hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, 
and his wooden leg under his left arm, I thought I should 
have fainted away ; but I bore up.' 

" If certain whispers current in the Kingsgate-street 
circles had any truth in them, she had indeed borne up 
surprisingly, and had exerted such uncommon fortitude 
as to clispose of Mr. Gamp's remains for the benefit of 
science. But it should be added, in fairness, that this 
had happened twenty years before ; and that Mr. and 
Mrs. Gamp had long been separated, on the ground of 
incompatibility of temper in their drink. 

" ' You have become indifferent since then, I sup- 
pose ? ' said Mr. Pecksniff. ' Use is second nature, 
Mrs. Gamp.' 

" ' You may well say second nater, sir,' returned that 

15 



226 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

lady. ' One's first ways is to find sich things a trial to 
the feelings, and so is one's lasting custom. If it wasn't 
for the nerve a little sip of liquor gives me (I never was 
able to do more than taste it), I never could go through 
with what I sometimes has to do. " Mrs. Harris," I says 
at the very last case as ever I acted in, which it was but 
a young person, — " Mrs. Harris," I says, " leave the bottle 
on the chimney-piece, and don't ask me take none, but 
let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged ; and then 
I will do what I'm engaged to do, according to the best 
of my ability." — " Mrs. Gamp," she says in answer, " if 
ever there was a sober creetur to *be got at eighteen 
pence a day for working-people, and three-and-six for 
gentlefolks," — night- watching,' said Mrs. Gamp with 
emphasis, ' being a extra charge, — " you are that in- 
wallable person." — " Mrs. Harris," I says to her, " don't 
name the charge ; for, if 1 could afford to lay all my feller- 
creeturs out for nothink, I would gladly do it, sich is the 
love I bears 'em. But what I always says to them as 
has the management of matters, Mrs. Harris " (here she 
kept her eye on Mr. Pecksniff) '' be they gents, or be 
they ladies, is. Don't ask me whether I won't take none, 
or whether I will, but leave the bottle on the chimne}^- 
piece, and let me put my lips to it when I am so dis- 
poged." ' 

" The conclusion of this affecting narrative brought 
them to the house. In the passage, they encountered 
Mr. Mould the undertaker, — a little elderly gentleman, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 227 

balcl, and in a suit of black, with a note-book in liis 
hand, a massive gold watch-chain dangling from his fob, 
and a face in which a queer attempt at melancholy was 
at odds with a smirk of satisfaction ; so that he looked 
as a man might, who, in the very act of smacking his 
lips over choice old wine, tried to make believe it was 
physic. 

" ' Well, Mrs. Gamp ; and how are you, Mrs. Gamp ? ' 
said this gentleman in a voice as soft as his step. 

" ' Pretty well, I thank you, sir,' dropping a courtesy. 

" ' You'll be ver}^ particular here, Mrs. Gamp. This 
is not a common case, Mrs. Gamp. Let every thing be 
very nice and comfortable, Mrs. Gamp, if you please,' 
said the undertaker, shaking his head with a solemn air. 

" ' It shall be, sir,' she replied, courtesying again. ' You 
knows me of old, sir, I hope.' 

" ' I hope so too, Mrs. Gamp,' said the undertaker ; 
' and I think so also.' Mrs. Gamp courtesied again. 
' This is one of the most impressive cases, sir,' he con- 
tinued, addressing Mr. Pecksniff, ' that I have seen in 
the whole course of my professional experience.' 

" ' Indeed, Mr. Mould ! ' cried that gentleman. 

" ' Such affectionate regret, sir, I never saw. There 
is no limitation, there is positively no limitation,' — open- 
ing his eyes wide, and standing on tiptoe, — ' in point of 
expense. I have orders, sir, to put on my whole estab- 
lishment of mutes, — and mutes come very dear, Mr. Peck- 
sniff, not to mention their drink, — to provide silver- 



228 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

plated handles of the very best description, ornamented 
with angels' heads from the most expensive dies ; to be 
perfectly profuse in feathers ; in short, sir, to tnrn out 
something absolutely gorgeous.' 

"'My friend Mr. Jonas is an excellent man,' said 
Mr. Pecksniff. 

"'I have seen a good deal of what is filial in my time, 
sir,' retorted Mould, ' and what is unfilial too. It is our 
lot. We come into the knowledge of those secrets. 
But any thing so filial as this, any thing so honorable to 
human nature, so calculated to reconcile all of us to the 
world we live in, never yet came under my observation. 
It only proves, sir, what was so forcibly observed by the 
lamented theatrical poet, — buried at Stratford, — that 
there is good in every thing.' 

" ' It is very pleasant to hear you say so, Mr. Mould,' 
observed Pecksniff." . . . 

" Mrs. Gamp, with the bottle on one knee, and a glass 
on the other, sat upon a stool, shaking her head for a 
long time, until, in a moment of abstraction, she poured 
out a dram of spirits, and raised it to her lips. It was 
succeeded by a second, and by a third ; and then her 
eyes — either in the sadness of her reflections upon life 
and death, or in her admiration of the liquor — were so 
turned up as to be quite invisible. But she sliook her 
head still." 

Mrs. Gamp's failings evidently did not " lean to vir- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 2'29 

tue's side," or to the side of temperance, if we may 
judge from facts rather than her own statements. AVhen 
she called afterwards at Mr. Mould's, a glass of rum is 
offered her. 

" Mrs. Gamp took the chair that was nearest the door, 
and, casting up her eyes towards the ceiling, feigned to 
be wholly insensible to the fact of a glass of rum being 
in preparation, until it was placed in her hand by one 
of the young ladies ; when she exhibited the greatest 
surprise. 

" ' A thing,' she said, ' as hardly ever, Mrs. Mould, 
occurs with me, unless it is when I am indispoged, and 
find my half a pint of jDorter settling heavy on the chest. 
Mrs. Harris often and often says to me, '' Sairey Gamp," 
she says, " you raly do amaze me I " — " Mrs. Harris," I 
says to her, " why so ? Give it a name, I beg." — " Telling 
the truth, then, ma'am," says Mrs. Harris, and " shaming 
him as shall be nameless betwixt you and me, ne^er did 
I think, till I know'd you, as any woman could sick- 
nurse and monthly likeways, on the little that you takes 
to drink." — "Mrs. Harris," I says to her, "none on us 
knows what we can do till we tries ; and wunst, when 
me and Gamp kept ouse, I thought so too. But now," I 
says, " my half a pint of porter fully satisfies, perwisin', 
Mrs. Harris, that it is brought reg'lar, and draw'd mild. 
Whether I sicks or monthlies, ma'am, I hope I does my 
duty ; but I am but a poor woman, and I earns my living 



230^ LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

liarcl : therefore I do require it, wliicli I makes confession, 
to be brought reg'hir, and draw'd mild." .' 

" The precise connection between these observations 
and the glass of rum did not appear ; for Mrs. Gamp, 
proposing as a toast, ' The best of lucks to all ! ' took 
off the dram in quite a scientific manner, Avithout any 
further remarks. 

" ' And what's your news, Mrs. Gamp ? ' asked Mould 
again, as that lady wiped her lips upon her shawl, and 
nibbled a corner off a soft biscuit, which she appeared to 
carry in her pocket as a provision against contingent 
drams. ' How's Mr. Chuffey ? ' 

" ' Mr. Chuffey, sir,' she replied, ' is jest as usual : he 
an't no better, and he an't no worse. I take it very kind 
in the gentleman to have wrote up to you, and said, " Let 
Mrs. Gamp take care of him till I come home ; " but 
ev'ry think he does is kind. There an't a many like 
him : if there was, we shouldn't want no churches.' 

"'What do you want to speak "to me about, Mrs. 
Gamp ? ' said Mould, coming to the point. 

'' ' Jest this, sir,' Mrs. Gamp returned, ' with thanks 
to you for asking. There is a gent, sir, at the Bull in 
Holborn, as has been took ill there, and is bad abed. 
They have a day-nurse as was recommended from Bar- 
tholomew's ; and well I knows her, Mr. Mould, her name 
bein' Mrs. Prig, — the best of creeturs. But she is other- 
ways engaged at night ; and they are in Avants of night- 
watching : consequent she says to them, having reposed 



CHARLES DICKENS. 231 

tlie greatest friendliness in me for twenty year, " The 
soberest person going, and the best of blessings in a sick- 
room, is Mrs. Gamp. Send a boy to Kingsgate Street," 
she says, " and snap her up at any price ; for Mrs. Gamp 
is worth her weight and more in goldian guineas." My 
landlord brings the message down to me, and says, " Bein' 
in a light place v/here you are, and this job promising so 
well, why not unite the two ? " — " No, sir," I says, *' not 
unbeknown to Mr. Mould ; an(J. therefore do not think 
it. But I will go to Mr. Mould," I says, " and ask him, 
if you like." ' Here she looked sideways at the under- 
taker, and came to a stop. 

" ' Night- watching, eh ? ' said Mould, rubbing his chin. 

" ' From eight o'clock till eight, sir. I will- not deceive 
you,' Mrs. Gamp rejoined." 

The undertaker consented ; and Sairey Gamp went to 
the place indicated. Arrived, she felt the necessity of 
advancing, bundle in hand, and introducing herself. 

" ' The night-nurse,' she observed, ' from Kingsgate 
Street, well beknown to Mrs. Prig, the day-nurse, and 
the best of creeturs. How is the poor dear gentleman, 
to-night ? If he an't no better yet, still that is what 
must be expected and prepared for. It an't the fust 
time by a many score, ma'am,' dropping a courtesy to the 
landlady, ' that Mrs. Prig and me has nussed together, 
turn and turn about, — one off, one on. We knows each 



232 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

other's ways, and often gives relief when others fail. 
Our charges is but low, sir,' Mrs. Gamp addressed her- 
self to John on this head, ' considerin' the nater of our 
painful dooty. If they wos made accordin' to our wishes, 
they would be easy paid.' 

" Regarding herself as having now delivered her inau- 
guration-address, Mrs. Gamp courtesied all round, and 
signified her wish to be conducted to the scene of her 
official duties. The cha^nbermaid led her through a va- 
riety of intricate passages, to the top of the house, and, 
pointing at length to a solitary door at the end of a 
gallery, informed her that yonder was the chamber where 
the patient lay. That done, she hurried off with all the 
speed she could make. 

" Mrs. Gamp traversed the gallery in a great heat from 
having carried her large bundle up so many stairs, and 
tapped at the door, which was immediately opened by 
Mrs. Prig, bonneted and shawled, and all impatience to 
be gone. Mrs. Prig was of the Gamp build, but not so 
fat ; and her voice was deeper, and more like a man's. 
She had also a beard. 

" ' I began to think you warn't a-coming,' Mrs. Prig 
observed, in some displeasure. 

" ' It shall be made good to-morrow night,' said Mrs. 
Gamp, ' honorable. I had to go and fetch my things.' 
She had begun to make signs of inquiry in reference to 
the position of the patient, and his overhearing them, — 
for there was a screen before the door, — when Mrs. Prig 
settled that point easily. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 233 

" ' Oh ! ' she said aloud, ' he's quiet ; but his wits is 
gone. It an't no matter wot you say.' 

" ' Any thin' to tell afore you goes, my dear ? ' asked 
Mrs. Gamp, setting her bundle down inside the door, 
and looking affectionately at her partner. 

" ' The pickled salmon,' Mrs. Prig replied, ' is quite 
delicious. I can partick'ler recommend it. Don't have 
nothink to say to the cold meat; for it tastes of the stable. 
The drinks is all good.' 

" Mrs. Gamp expressed herself much gratified. 

" ' The physic and them things is on the drawers and 
mankleshelf,' said Mrs. Prig cursorily. ' He took his 
last slime-draught at seven. The easy-chair an't soft 
enough. You'll want his piller.' 

" Mrs. Gamp thanked her for these hints, and, giving 
her a friendly good-night, held the door open until she 
had disappeared at the other end of the gallery. Hav- 
ing thus performed the hospitable duty of seeing her 
safely off, she shut it, locked it on the inside, took up 
her bundle, walked round the screen, and entered on 
her occupation of the sick-chamber. 

" ' A little dull, but not so bad as might be,' Mrs. 
Gamp remarked. ' I'm glad to see a parapidge, in case 
of fire, and lots of roofs and chimney-pots to walk upon.' 

" It will be seen, from these remarks, that Mrs. Gamp 
was looldng out of window. When she had exhausted 
the prospect, she tried the easy-chair, which she indig- 
nantly declared was ' harder than a brickbadge.' Next 



234 LIFE AND WHITINGS OF 

she pursued her researches among the physic bottles, 
glasses, jugs, and tea-cups ; and, when she had enth^ely 
satisfied her curiosity on all these subjects of investiga- 
tion, she untied her bonnet-strings, and strolled up to 
the bedside to take a look at the patient. 

" A young man, dark, and not ill-looking, with long 
black hair, that seemed the blacker for the whiteness of 
the bed-clothes. His eyes were partly open ; and he 
never ceased to roll his head from side to side upon the 
pillow, keeping his body almost quiet. He did not utter 
words ; but every now and then gave vent to an expres- 
sion of impatience or fatigue, sometimes of surprise ; 
and still his restless head — oh, weary, Aveary hour ! — 
went to and fro without a moment's intermission. 

" Mrs. Gamp solaced herself with a pinch of snuff, and 
stood looking at him with her. head inclined a little side- 
ways, as a connoisseur might gaze upon a doubtful work 
of art. By degrees, a horrible remembrance of one 
branch of her calling took possession of the woman ; and, 
stooping down, she pinned his wandering arms against his 
sides to see how he would look if laid out as a dead man. 
Hideous as it may appear, her fingers itched to compose 
his limbs in that last marble attitude. 

" ' Ah ! ' said Mrs. Gamp, walking away from the bed, 
' he'd make a lovely corpse.' 

" She now proceeded to unpack her bundle ; lighted 
a candle with the aid of a fire-box on the drawers ; 
filled a small kettle as a preliminary to refreshing her- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 235 

self witli a cup of tea in the course of the night ; laid 
what she called ' a little bit of fire,' for the same philan- 
thropic purpose ; and also set forth a small teaboard, 
that nothing might be wanting for her comfortable en- 
joyment. These preparations occupied so long, that, 
when they Avere brought to a conclusion, it was high 
time to think about supper : so she rang the bell, and 
ordered it. 

" ' I think, young woman,' said Mrs. Gamp to the as- 
sistant chambermaid, in a tone expressive of weakness, 
' that I could pick a little bit of pickled salmon, with a 
nice little sprig of fennel, and a sprinkling of white pep- 
per. I takes new bread, my dear, with jest a little pat 
of fresh butter, and a mossel of cheese. In case there 
should be such a thing as a cowcumber in the 'ouse, will 
you be so kind as bring it? for I'm rather partial to 'em ; 
and they does a world of good in a sick-room. If they 
draws the Brighton Old Tipper here, I takes that ale at 
night, my love ; it bein' considered wakeful by the doc- 
tors. And whatever you do, young woman, don't bring 
more than a shilling's-worth of gin and water warm 
when I rings the bell a second time ; for that is always 
my allowance, and I never takes a drop beyond.' 

" Having preferred these moderate requests, Mrs. 
Gamp observed, that she would stand at the door until 
the order was executed, to the end that the patient 
might not be disturbed by her opening it a second time ; 
and therefore she would thank the young woman to 
' look sharp.' 



236 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" A tray was brought with every thing upon it, even 
to the cucumber ; and Mrs. Gamp accordingly sat down 
to eat and drink in high good-humor. The extent to 
which she availed herself of the vinegar, and supped 
up that refreshing fluid with the blade of her knife, can 
scarcely be expressed in narrative. 

" ' Ah ! ' sighed Mrs. Gamp, as she meditated over the 
warm shilling's-worth, ' Avhat a blessed thing it is — liv- 
ing in a wale — to be contented ! What a blessed thing 
it is to make sick people happy in their beds, and never 
mind one's self as long as one can do a service ! I don't 
believe a finer cowcumber was every grow'd. I'm sure 
I never see one.' 

" She moralized in the same vein until her glass was 
empty, and then administered the patient's medicine by 
the simple process of clutching his windpipe to make 
him gasp, and immediately pouring it down his throat. 

" ' I a'most forgot the piller, I declare ! ' said Mrs. 
Gamp, drawing it away. ' There ! Now he's comforta- 
ble as he can be, /'m sure ! I must try to make myself 
as much so as I can.' 

" With this view, she went about the construction of 
an extemporaneous bed in the easy-chair, with the addi- 
tion of the next easy one for her feet. Having formed 
the best couch that the circumstances admitted of, she 
took out of her bundle a yellow nightcap, of prodigious 
size, in shape resembling a cabbage ; which article of 
dress she fixed and tied on with the utmost care, pre- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 237 

viousl}^ divesting herself of a row of bald old curls that 
could scarcely be called false, they were so very inno- 
cent of any thing approaching to deception. From the 
same repository she brought forth a night -jacket, in 
which she also attired herself. Finally, she produced a 
watchman'.s coat, which she tied ai'ound her neck by the 
sleeves, so that she became two people, and looked, be- 
hind, as if she Avere in the act of being embraced by one 
of the old patrol. 

" All these arrangements made, she lighted the rush- 
light, coiled herself up on her couch, and went to sleep. 
Ghostly and dark the room became, and full of lowering 
shadows. The distant noises in the streets were gradu- 
ally hushed ; the house was quiet as a sepulchre ; the 
dead of night was coffined in the silent city. 

" Oh, weary, weary hour ! Oh, haggard mind, grop- 
ing darkly through the past ; incapable of detaching 
itself from the miserable present ; dragging its heavy 
chain of care through imaginary feasts and revels, and 
scenes of awful pomp ; seeking but a moment's rest 
among the long-forgotten haunts of childhood, and the 
resorts of yesterday ; and dimly finchng fear and horror 
everj^where I Oh, weary, weary hour ! — what were the 
wanderings of Cain to tliese ! 

" Still, without a moment's interval, the burning head 
tossed to and fro. Still, from time to time, fatigue, im- 
patience, suffering, and surprise found utterance upon 
that rack, and plainly too, though never once in words. 



238 LIFE AND WKITINGS OF 

At length, in tlie solemn liour of midnight, he began to 
talk, waiting awfully for answers sometimes, as though 
invisible companions were about his bed, and so reply- 
ing to their speech, and questioning again. 

" Mrs. Gamp awoke, and sat up in her bed, present- 
ing on the wall the shadow of a gigantic night-constable 
struggling with a prisoner. 

" ' Come ! Hold your tongue ! ' she cried in sharp 
reproof. ' Don't make none of that noise here ! ' 

" There was no alteration in the face, or in the inces- 
sant motion of the head ; but he talked on wildly. 

" ' Ah ! ' said Mrs. Gamp, coming out of the chair with 
an impatient shiver, ' I thought I was a-sleepin' too 
pleasant to last. The Devil's in the night, I think, it's 
turned so chilly.' 

" ' Don't drink so much ! ' cried the sick man. ' You'll 
ruin us all. Don't you see how the fountain sinks ? 
Look at the mark where the sparkling water was just 
now ! ' 

" ' Sparkling water, indeed ! ' said Mrs. Gamp. ' I'll 
have a sparkling cup o' tea, I think. I wish you'd hold 
your noise ! ' 

" He burst into a laugh, which, being prolonged, fell 
off into a dismal wail. Checking himself, with fierce 
inconstancy he began to count, fast. 

" ' One — two — three — four — five — six.' 

" ' '' One, two, buckle my shoe," ' said Mrs. Gamp, 
who was now on her knees, lighting the fire ; ' " tliree, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 239 

four, sliut the door," — I wish you'd shut your mouth, 
young man ; " five, six, picldng up sticks." If I'd got 
a few handy, I should have the kettle biling all the 
sooner.' 

" Awaiting this desirable consummation, she sat down 
so close to the fender (which was a high one), that her 
nose rested upon it ; and for some time she drowsily 
amused herself by sliding that feature backwards and 
forwards along the brass top, — as far as she could with- 
out changing her position to do it. She maintained, all 
the while, a running commentary upon the wanderings 
of the man in bed. 

" ' That makes five hundred and twenty-one men, all 
dressed alike, and with the same distortion on their faces, 
that have passed in at the window, and out at the door,' 
he cried anxiously. ' Look there ! Five hundred and 
twenty-two — twenty-three — twenty-four. Do you see 
them ? ' 

"'Ah! J see 'em,' said Mrs. Gamp. 'All the whole 
kit of 'em numbered like hackney-coaches ; an't they ? ' 

" ' Touch me ! Let me be sure of this. Touch me ! ' 

" ' You'll take your next draught when I've made 
the kettle bile,' retorted Mrs. Gamp composedly ; ' and 
you'll be touched then. You'll be touched up, too, if 
you don't take it quiet.' 

" ' Five hundred and twenty-eight, five hundred and 
twenty-nine, five hundred and thirty, — look here ! ' 

" ' What's the matter now ? ' said Mrs. Gamp. 



240 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' They're coming four abreast, — each man with his 
arm intwined in the next man's, and his hand upon his 
shoulder. What's that upon the arm of every man, and 
on the flas^ ? ' 

" ' Spiders, p'raps,' said Mrs. Gamp. 

" ' Crape ! — black crape I Good God ! why do they 
wear it outside ? ' 

" ' Would you have 'em carry black crape in their in- 
sides ? ' Mrs. Gamp retorted. ' Hold your noise ! hold 
your noise I ' 

" The fire beginning by this time to impart a grateful 
warmth, Mrs. Gamp became silent, gradually rubbed 
her nose more and more slowly along the top of the 
fender, and fell into a heavy doze. She was awakened 
by the room ringing (as she fancied) with a name she 
knew, — 

" ' Chuzzlewit ! ' 

" The sound was so distinct and real, and so full of 
agonized entreaty, that Mrs. Gamp jumped up in terror, 
and ran to the door. She expected to find the passage 
filled with people come to tell her that the house in the 
city had taken fire : but the place was empty ; not a 
soul was there. She opened the window, and looked 
out. Dark, dull, dingy, and desolate housetops. As 
she passed to her seat again, she glanced at the patient. 
Just the same, but silent. Mrs. Gamj^ was so warm 
now, that she threw off the watchman's coat, and fanned 
herself. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 241 

" ' It seemed to make the weiy bottles ring,' she said. 
' What could I have been a-dreaming of ? That dratted 
Chuffey, I'll be bound ! ' 

" The supposition was probable enough. At any rate, 
a pinch of snuff, and the song of the steaming kettle, 
quite restored the tone of Mrs. Gamp's nerves, which 
were none of the weakest. She brewed her tea, made 
some buttered toast, and sat down at the tea-board, 
with her face to the fire ; when once again, in a tone 
more terrible than that which had vibrated in her slum- 
bering ear, these words were shrieked out, — 

" ' Chuzzlewit ! Jonas ! No ! ' 

" Mrs. Gamp drojDped the cup she was in the act of 
raising to her lips, and turned round with a start that 
made the little tea-board leap. The cry had come from 
the bed. 

" It was bright morning the next time IMrs. Gamp 
looked out of the window ; and the sun was rising cheer- 
fully. Lighter and ligliter grew the sky, and noisier the 
streets ; and high into the summer air uprose the smoke 
of newly-kindled fires, until the busy day Avas broad 
awake. 

" Mrs. Prig relieved punctually, having passed a good 
night at her other patient's. Mr. Westlock came at the 
same time ; but he was not admitted, the disorder being 
infectious. The doctor came too. The doctor shook 
his head. It was all he could do, under the circum- 
stances ; and he did it well. 

16 



242 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 



" ' What sort of a night, nurse ? ' 



" ' Kestless, sir,' said Mrs. Gamp. 

" ' Talk much ? ' 

" ' Micldhng, sir,' said Mrs. Gamp. 

" ' Nothing to the purpose, I suppose ? ' 

" ' Oh, bless you, no, sir ! Only jargon.' 

" ' Well,' said the doctor : ' we must keep him quiet. 
Keep the room cool, give him his draughts regularly, 
and see that he's carefully looked too. That's all ! ' 

" ' As long as Mrs. Prig and me waits upon him, sir, 
no fear of that,' said Mrs. Gamp. 

" ' I suppose,' observed Mrs. Prig, when they had 
courtesied the doctor out, '• there's nothin' new ? ' 

" ' Nothin' at all, my dear,' said Mrs. Gamp. ' He's 
rather wearin' in his talk from making up a lot of 
names : else ways you needn't mind him.' 

" ' Oh ! I sha'n't mind him,' Mrs. Prig returned. ' I 
have somethin' else to think of.' 

'' ' I pays my debts to-night, you know, my dear, and 
comes afore my time,' said Mrs. Gamp. ' But Betsey 
Prig,' — speaking with great feeling, and laying her 
hand upon her arm, 'try the cowcumbers, God bless 
you!'" 

In the summer of 1844, Mr. Dickens, w^th his family, 
/ went to Italy, and remained there about a year, having 
I Genoa for his headquarters. On his return, he published 
I a volume of very readable sketches, entitled '' Pictures 

\ 

\ 



CHARLES DICKENS. 243 

from Italy." The following extract from this book gives 
a fine picture of his palatial home in Genoa, and the 
\ view from thence : — 

" There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), 
a lovelier residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace 
of the Fishponds, whither we . removed as soon as our 
three months' tenancy of the Pink Jail at Albaro had 
ceased and determined. 

" It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but 
aloof from the town, surrounded by beautiful gardens 
of its own, adorned with statues, vases, fountains, marble 
basins, terraces, walks of orange-trees and lemon-trees, 
groves of roses and camellias. All its apartments are 
beautiful in their proportions and decorations ; but the 
great hall, some fifty feet in height, with three large 
windows at the end, overlooking the whole town of 
Genoa, the harbor, and the neighboring sea, affords one 
of the most fascinating and delightful prospects in the 
world. Any house more cheerful and habitable than 
the great rooms are within, it would be difQcult to con- 
ceive ; and certainly nothing more delicious than the 
scene without, in sunshine or in moonlight, could be 
imagined. It is more like an enchanted palace in an 
Eastern story than a grave and sober lodging. 

" How you may wander on, from room to room, and 
never tire of the wild fancies on the Avails and ceilings, 
as bright in their fresh coloring as if they bad been 



244 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

painted yesterda}^ ; or how one floor, or even the great 
hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a spacious 
promenade ; or how there are corridors and bed-cham- 
bers above, which we never use, and rarely visit, and 
scarcely know the way through ; or how there is a view 
of a perfectly different character on each of the four 
sides of the building, — matters little. But that prospect 
from the hall is like a vision to me. I go back to it in 
fancy, as I have done in calm reality, a hundred times 
a day, and stand there, looking out, with the sweet 
scents from the garden rising up about me, in a perfect 
dream of happiness. 

" There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its 
many churches, monasteries, and convents pointing up 
into the sunny sky ; and down below me, just where the 
roofs begin, a solitary convent-parapet, fashioned like a 
gallery, with an iron cross at the end, where sometimes, 
early in the morning, I have seen a little group of dark- 
veiled nuns ghding sorrowfully to and fro, and stopping 
now and then to peep down upon the waking world in 
which they have no part. Old Monte Faccio, brightest 
of hills in good weather, but sulkiest when storms are 
coming on, is here, upon the left. The fort within the 
walls (the good king built it to command the town, and 
beat the houses of the Genoese about their ears, in case 
they should be discontented) commands that height upon 
the right. The broad sea lies beyond, in front there ; 
and that line of coast, beginning by the light-house, and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 245 

tapering away, a mere speck in the rosy distance, is tlie 
beautiful coast-road that leads to Nice. The garden near 
at hand, among the roofs and houses, — all red with roses, 
and fresh with httle fountains, — is the Acqua Sola, a 
public promenade, where the military band plays gayly, 
and the white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese nobil- 
ity ride round and round and round, in state-clothes and 
coaches at least, if not in absolute wisdom. Within a 
stone's-throw, as it seems, the audience of the day-theatre 
sit ; their faces turned this way. But, as the stage is hidden, 
it is very odd, without a knowledge of the cause, to see 
their faces change so suddenly from earnestness to laugh- 
ter, and odder still to hear the rounds upon rounds of 
applause, rattling in the evening air, to which the cur- 
tain falls. But, being Sunday night, they act their best 
and most attractive play. And now the sun is going 
down in such magnificent array of red and green and 
golden light, as neither pen nor pencil could depict ; 
and, to the ringing of the vesper-bells, darkness sets in 
at once, without a twilight. Then lights begin to shine 
in Genoa, and on the country-road ; and the revolving 
lantern out at sea there, flashing for an instant on this 
palace front and portico, illuminates it as if there were 
a bright moon bursting from behind a cloud, then 
merges it in deep obscurity. And this, so far as I know, 
is the only reason why the Genoese avoid it after dark, 
and think it haunted. 

" My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to 



246 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

come, but no tiling worse, I will engage. The same 
ghost will occasionally sail awa}^, as I did one pleasant 
autumn evening, into the bright prospect, and snuff the 
morning air at Marseilles." 

A. graphic portraiture of Rome, and of Mr. Dickens's 
emotions on viewing the Coliseum, is in the following 
words : — 

" We entered the Eternal City at about four o'clock 
in the afternoon, on the 30th of January, by the Porta 
del Popolo, and came immediately (it was a dark, 
muddy day, and there had been heavy rain) on the 
skirts of the Carnival. We did not then know that we 
were only looldng at the fag-end of the masks, who 
were driving slowly round and round the Piazza until 
they could find a promising opportunity for falling into 
the stream of carriages, and getting, in good time, into 
the thick of the festivity ; and coming among them so 
abruptly, all travel-sta'ued and weary, was not coming 
very well prepared to enjoy the scene. 

" We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte Molle, two 
or three miles before. It had looked as yellow as it 
ought to look, and, hurrying on between its worn-away 
and miry banks, had a promismg aspect of desolation 
and ruin. The masquerade dresses on the fringe of the 
Carnival did great violence to this promise. There 
were no great ruins, no solemn tokens of antiquity, to 



CHARLES DICKENS. 247 

be seen : they all lie on the other side of the city. 
There seemed to be long streets of commonplace shops 
and houses, such as are to be found in any European 
town : there were busy people, equipages, ordinary 
walkers to and fro, a multitude of chattering strangers. 
It was no more my Rome — the Rome of anybody's 
fancy, man or boy, degraded and fallen and lying asleep 
in the sun among a heap of ruins — than the Place de 
la Concorde in Paris is. A cloudy sky, a dull, cold 
rain, and muddy streets, I was prepared for, but not for 
this ; and I confess to having gone to bed that night in 
a very indifferent humor, and with a very considerably 
quenched enthusiasm. 

" Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off 
to St. Peter's. It looked immense in the distance, but 
distinctly and decidedly small, by comparison, on a near 
approach. The beauty of the piazza in which it stands, 
with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing 
fountains, — so fresh, so broad and free and beautiful, 
— nothing can exaggerate. The first burst of the inte- 
rior, in all its expansive majesty and glory, and, most of 
all, the looking-up into the dome, is a sensation never to 
be forgotten. But there were preparations for a festa. 
The pillars of stately marble were swathed in some im- 
pertinent frippery of red and yellow ; the altar, and 
entrance to the subterranean chapel, — which is before 
it, in the centre of the church, — were like a goldsmith's 
shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very lavish panto- 



248 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

mime. And, though I had as high a sense of the beauty of 
the building (I hope) as it is possible to entertain, I felt 
no very strong emotion. I have been infinitely more af- 
fected in many English cathedrals, when the organ has 
been playing, and in many English country churches, 
when the congregation have been singing. I had a 
much greater sense of mystery and wonder in the Ca- 
thedral of San Mark at Venice. 

" Yf hen we came out of the church again (we stood 
nearly an hour staring up into the dome, and would not 
have 'gone over 'the cathedral then for any money), 
we said to the coachman, ' Go to the Coliseum.' In a 
quarter of an hour or so, he stopped at the gate, and we 
went in. 

" It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest truth, to say, 
— so suggestive and distinct is it at this hour, — that, 
for a moment, — actually in passing in, — they who will 
may have the whole great pile before them, as it used to 
be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into the 
arena, and such a whirl of strife and blood and dust 
Groins: on there as no lanGTuaGfe can describe. Its soli- 
tude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike 
upon the stranger the next moment like a softened sor- 
row ; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved 
and overcome by any sight not immediately connected 
with his own affections and afflictions. 

" To see it crumbling there, an inch a year, its walls 
and arches overgrown with green ; its corridors open 



CHARLES DICKENS. 249 

to the clay ; the long grass growmg in its porches ; 
3^oung trees of yesterday springing up on its ragged 
parapets, and bearing fruit (chance produce of the 
seeds dropped there by the birds who build their nests 
within its chinks and crannies) ; — to see its Pit of 
Fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross 
planted in the centre ; to climb into its upper halls, and 
look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it ; the triumphal 
arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus ; 
the Roman Forum ; the Palace of the Caesars ; the tem- 
ples of the old religion, — fallen down and gone, — is 
to see the ghost of old Rome — wicked, wonderful old 
city — haunting the very ground on which its people 
trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately, the 
most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight conceiv- 
able. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight of 
the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the 
lustiest life, have moved one heart as it must move all 
who look upon it now, a ruin. God be thanked ! a 
ruin ! 

" As it tops the other ruins, standing there, a moun- 
tain among graves, so do its ancient influences outlive 
all other remnants of the old mythology and old butchery 
of Rome, in the nature of the fierce and cruel Roman 
people. The Italian face changes as the visitor ap- 
proaches the city : its beauty becomes devilish ; and 
there is scarcely one countenance in a hundred, among 
the common people in the streets, that would not be 



250 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

at liome and liappy in a renovated Coliseum to-mor- 
row. 

" Here was Rome indeed, at last, and such a Rome as 
no one can imagine in its full and awful grandeur. We 
wandered out upon the Appian Way, and then went on, 
through miles of ruined tombs and broken walls, with 
here and there a desolate and uninhabited house, — past 
the Circus of Romulus, where the course of the chariots, 
the stations of the judges, competitors, and spectators, 
are yet as plainly to be seen as in old time ; past the 
tomb of Cecilia Metella; past all enclosure, hedge or 
stake, wall or fence ; away upon the open Campagna, 
where, on that side of Rome, nothing is to be beheld but 
ruin. Except where the distant Apennines bound the 
view upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one field 
of ruin. Broken aqueducts left in the most picturesque 
and beautiful clusters of arches, broken temples, 
broken tombs, — a desert of decay, sombre and desolate 
beyond all expression, and with a history in every stone 
that strews the ground." 

" Pictures from Italy " closes with the following allu- 
sion to beautiful Florence, and words of hope concern- 
ing Italy, which are characteristic of Dickens. He 
says, — 

" But how much beauty is there, when, on a fair, 
clear morning, we look from the summit of a hill on 



CHARLES DICKENS. 251 

Florence ! See where it lies before us in a sun-liglited 
valley, bright with the winding Arno, and shut in by 
swelling hills ; its domes and towers and palaces rising 
from the rich country in a glittering heap, and shining 
in the sun like gold ! 

" Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of 
beautiful Florence ; and the strong old piles of building 
make such heaps of shadow on the ground and in the 
river, that there is another and a different city of rich 
forms and fancies always lying at our feet. Prodigious 
palaces, constructed for defence, with small, distrustful 
windows heavily barred, and walls of great thickness, 
formed of huge masses of rough stone, frown in their 
old sulky state on every street. In the midst of the 
city — in the piazza of the grand duke, adorned with 
beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune — rises 
the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging 
battlements, and the Great Tower that watches over 
the whole town. In its court-yard, worthy of the 
Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom, is a massive 
staircase, that the heaviest wagon and the stoutest team 
of horses might be driven up. Within it is a great 
saloon, faded and tarnished in its stately decorations, 
and mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in pictures 
on its walls, the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of 
the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in an 
adjacent court-yard of the building, — a foul and dismal 
place, where some men are shut up close in small cells 



252 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

like ovens, and where others look through bars, and beg ; 
where some are playing draughts, and some are talldng 
to their friends, who smoke, the while, to purify the air ; 
and some are buying fruit and wine of women-venders ; 
and all are squalid, dh ty, and vile to look at. ' They 
are merry enough, signore,' says the jailer. ' They are 
all blood-stained here,' he adds, indicating with his hand 
three-fourths of the whole building. Before the hour 
is out, an old man, eighty years of age, quarrelling over 
a bargain with a young girl of seventeen, stabs her dead, 
in the market-place full of bright flowers, and is brought 
in prisoner to swell the number. 

" Among the four old bridges that span the river, the 
Ponte Vecchio, that bridge which is covered with the 
shops of jewellers and goldsmiths, is a most enchant- 
ing feature in the scene. The space of one house in 
the centre, being left open, the view beyond is shown 
as in a frame ; and that precious glimpse of sky and 
water and rich buildings, shining so quietly among the 
huddled roofs and gables on the bridge, is exquisite 
Above it, the gallery of the grand duke crosses the 
river. It was built to connect the two great palaces by 
a secret passage ; and it takes its jealous course among 
the streets and houses with true despotism, going 
where it lists, and spurning every obstacle away be- 
fore it. 

" The grand duke has a worthier secret passage 
through the streets, in his black robe and hood, as a 



CHARLES DICKENS. 253 

member of the Compagnia della Misericordia ; wliich 
brotherhood includes all ranks of men. If an accident 
take place, their office is to raise the sufferer, and bear 
him tenderly to the hospital. If a fire break out, it is 
one of their functions to repair to the spot, and render 
their assistance and protection. It is also among their 
commonest offices to attend and console the sick ; and 
tliey neither receive money, nor eat, nor drink, in any 
house they visit for this purpose. Those who are on 
duty for the time are called together, on a moment's 
notice, by the tolling of the great bell of the tower ; and 
it is said that the grand duke has been seen, at this 
sound, to rise from his seat at table, and quietly with- 
draw to attend the summons. 

'' In this other large piazza, where an irregular kind 
of market is held, and stores of old iron and other small 
merchandise are set out on stalls or scattered on the pave- 
ment, are grouped together the cathedral with its great 
dome, the beautiful Italian Gothic tower, the cam- 
panile, and the baptistery with its wrought bronze 
doors. And here, a small untrodden square in the 
pavement, is ' the stone of Dante,' where (so runs the 
story) he was used to bring his stool, and sit in contem- 
plation. I wonder was he ever, in his bitter exile, with- 
held from cursing the very stones in the streets of 
Florence the ungrateful, by any kind remembrance 
of this old musing-place, and its association with gentle 
thouG^hts of little Beatrice. 



254 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" The Chapel of the Medici, the good and bad angels 
of Florence ; the Church of Santa Croce, where Michael 
Angelo lies buried, and where every stone in the clois- 
ters is eloquent on great men's deaths ; innumerable 
churches, often masses of unfinished heavy brickwork 
externally, but solemn and serene within, — arrest our 
lingering steps in strolling through the city. 

" In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters is 
the Museum of Natural History, famous through the 
world for its preparations in wax, beginning with the 
models of leaves, seeds, plants, inferior animals, and 
gradually ascending, through separate organs of the 
human frame, up to the whole structure of that won- 
derful creation, exquisitely presented, as in recent 
death. Few admonitions of our frail mortality can be 
more solemn and more sad, or strike so home upon the 
heart, as the counterfeits of youth and beauty that are 
lying there uj)on their beds in their last sleep. 

" Beyond the Avails, the whole sweet Valley of the 
Arno, the convent at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, 
Boccaccio's house, -old villas and retreats, innumerable 
spots of interest, — all glowing in a landscape of sur- 
passing beauty steeped in the richest light, — are spread 
before us. Returning from so much brightness, how 
solemn and how grand the streets again, with their 
great, dark, mournfid palaces, and many legends, not 
of siege and war and might, and iron hand alone, but of 
the triumphant growth of peaceful arts and sciences ! 



CHARLES DICKENS. 255 

"What light is shed upon the world, at this day, 
from amidst these rugged palaces of Florence ! Here, 
open to all comers, in their beautiful and calm retreats, 
the ancient sculptors are immortal, side by side with 
Michael Angelo, Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, 
poets, historians, philosophers, — those illustrious men 
of history, beside whom its crowned heads and har- 
nessed warriors show so poor and small, and are so soon 
forgotten. Here the imperishable part of noble minds 
survives, placid and equal,' when strongholds of assault 
and defence are overthrown ; when the tyranny of the 
many or the few, or both, is but a tale ; when pride 
and power are so much cloistered dust. The fire within 
the stern streets, and among the massive palaces and 
towers, kindled by rays from heaven, is still burning 
brightly when the flickering of war is extinguished, and 
the household-fires of generations have decayed ; as 
thousands upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife 
and passion of the hour, have faded out of the old 
squares and public haunts, while the nameless Floren- 
tine lady, preserved from oblivion by a painter's hand, 
yet lives on in enduring grace and youth. 

" Let us look back on Florence while we may, and, 
when its shining dome is seen no more, go travelling 
through cheerful Tuscany with a bright remembrance 
of it ; for Italy will be the fairer for the recollection. 
The summer-time being come, and Genoa and Milan, 
and the Lake of Como, lying far behind us, and we rest- 



256 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

ing at Faiflo, a Swiss village, near the awful rocks and 
mountains, the everlasting snows and roaring cataracts, 
of the Great St. Gothard, hearing the Italian tongue 
for the last time on this journey, — let us part from 
Italy, with all its miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in 
our admiration of the beauties, natural and artificial, of 
which it is full to overflowing, and in our tenderness 
towards a people naturally well disposed and patient 
and sweet-tempered. Years of neglect, oppression, and 
misrule, have been at work \o change their nature, and 
reduce their spirit ; miserable jealousies, fomented by 
petty princes to whom union was destruction, and di- 
vision strength, have been a canker at the root of their 
nationality, and have barbarized their language : but 
the good that was in them ever is in them yet, and a 
noble people may be one day raised up from these 
ashes. Let us entertain that hope ! And let us not 
remember Italy the less regardfully, because in every 
fragment of her fallen temples, and every stone of her 
deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the 
lesson that the wheel of time is rolling for an end, and 
that the world is, in all great essentials, better, gentler, 
more forbearing, and more hopeful, as it rolls ! " 

For several years, at the merry Christmas-time, Mr. 
Dickens furnished to his admiring readers some brief 
romances, which greatly added to his fame. There were 
five in the series. They were " The Christmas Carol," 



CHARLES DICKENS. 2o7 

published in 1843 ; " The Chimes," 1844 ; '' The Cricket 
on the Hearth," 1845 ; " The Battle of Life," 184G ; and 
'' The Haunted Man," 1847. " Some critics," it is said, 
" have supposed that the last one or two of these series 
showed evidences of a fatigued mind. This may be 
true ; in which case, it was evidence of practical sense 
and self-knowledge to discontinue them." 

In the peroration of the concluding lecture which 
Thackeray gave on " English Humorists of the Eigh- 
teenth Century," he paid an eloquent and touching trib- 
ute to the genius of Mr. Dickens, and said, — 

" As for the charities of Mr. Dickens, multiplied kind- 
nesses which he has conferred upon us all, — upon our 
children, upon people educated and uneducated, upon 
the myriads here and at home who speak our common 
tongue, — have you not, have not I, all of us, reason to be 
thankful to this kind friend, who soothed and charmed 
•so many hours, brought pleasure and sweet laughter to 
so many homes, made such multitudes of children hap- 
py, endowed us with such a sweet store of gracious 
thoughts, fair fancies, soft sympathies, hearty enjoy- 
ments? There are creations of Mr. Dickens's which 
seem to me to rank as personal benefits ; figures so de- 
lightful, that one feels happier and better for knowing 
them, as one does for being brought into the society of 
very good men and women. The atmosphere in which 
these people live is wholesome to breathe in ; you feel, 

17 



258 LIFE AND -WRITINGS OF 

that to be allowed to speak to them is a personal kind- 
ness ; you come away better for your contact with them ; 
your hands seem cleaner from having the privilege of 
shaking theirs. Was there ever a better charity-sermon 
preached in the world than Dickens's ' Christmas Carol ' ? 
I believe it occasioned immense hospitality throughout 
England ; was the means of lighting up hundreds of 
kind fires at Christmas-time ; caused a wonderful out- 
pouring of Christmas good feeling, of Christmas punch- 
brewing ; an awful slaughter of Christmas turkeys, and 
roasting and basting of Christmas beef." 

Thackeray's private library was sold after his death ; 
and a copy of " The Christmas Carol," presented him 
by the author, with a note, sold for twenty-five pounds. 

The following is the closing portion of the first 
" Christmas Carol : " — 

" Yes ! and the bedpost was his own ; the bad was 
his own ; the room was his ov/n ; best and happiest of 
all, the time before him was his own, to make amends in. 

" ' I will live in the past, the present, and the future,' 
Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ' The 
spirits of all three shall strive within me. O Jacob 
Marley! Heaven and the Christmas-time be praised 
for this ! I say it on my knees, old Jacob, — on my 
knees ! ' 

" He was so fluttered, and so glowing with his good 



CHAKLES DICKENS. 259 

intentions, that liis broken voice would scarcely answer 
to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his con- 
flict with the spirit ; and his face was wet with tears. 

" ' They are not torn down! ' cried Scrooge, folding one 
of his bed-curtains in his arms, — ' they are not torn 
down, rings and all. They are here, — I am here. The 
shadows of the things that would have been may be dis- 
pelled. They will be : I know they will I ' 

"His hands were busy with his garments all this 
time, turning them inside out, j)utting them on upside 
down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them par- 
ties to every kind of extravagance. 

" ' I don't know what to do ! ' cried Scroosre, lausfhino: 
and crying in the same breath, and making a perfect 
Laocoon of himself with -his stockings. ' I am as light 
as a feather ; I am as happy as an angel ; I am as merry 
as a school-boy ; I am as giddy as a drunken man. A 
merry Christmas to everybody ! A happy New -Year to 
all the world ! Halloo, here ! Whoop ! Halloo ! ' 

" He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now 
standing there, perfectly winded. 

" ' There's the saucepan that the gruel was in ! ' cried 
Scrooge, starting ofP again, and going round the fire- 
place. ' There's the door by which the ghost of Jacob 
INIarley entered ! There's the corner where the ghost of 
Christmas Present sat ! There's the window where I 
saw the wandering spirits ! It's all right, it's all true, 
it all happened. Ha, ha, ha ! ' 



260 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" Really, for a man wlio had been out of practice for 
so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious 
laugh, — the father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs. 

" ' I don't know what day of the month it is,' said 
Scrooge ; ' I don't know how long I have been among 
the spirits. I don't know any thing. I'm quite a baby. 
Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hal- 
loo ! Whoop ! Halloo, here I ' 

" He was checked in his transports by the churches 
ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, 
clang, hammer ; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding ; 
hammer, clang, clash ! Oh, glorious, glorious ! 

" Running to the window, he opened it, and put out 
his head. No fog, no mist ; clear, bright, jovial, stir- 
ring, cold ; cold, piping for the blood to dance to ; 
golden sunlight ; heavenly sky ; sweet, fresh air ; merry 
bells. Oh, glorious, glorious ! 

" ' What's to-day ? ' cried Scrooge, calling downward 
to a boy in Sunday clothes, who, perhaps, had loitered in 
to look about him. 

" ' Eh ? ' returned the boy, with all his might of 
wonder. 

" ' What's to-day, my fine fellow ? ' said Scrooge. 

" ' To-day ! ' replied the boy. ' Why, Christmas Day ! ' 

" ' It's Christmas Day ! ' said Scrooge to himself. ' I 
haven't missed it. The spirits have done it all in one 
night. They can do any thing they like. Of course, 
they can. Halloo, my fine fellow ! ' 



CHARLES DICKENS. 261 

" ' Halloo ! ' returned tlie boy. 

" ' Do you know the poulterer's, in tlie next street but 
one, at the corner ? ' Scrooge inqun^ed. 

" ' I should hope I did,' replied the lad. 

" ' An intelligent boy ! ' said Scrooge, — ' a remarkable 
boy ! Do you know whether they've sold the prize-tur- 
key that was hanging up there ? — not the little prize- 
turkey, the big one ? ' 

" ' What, the one as big as me ? ' returned the boy. 

" ' What a delightful boy ! ' said Scrooge. ' It's a 
pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck ! ' 

" ' It's hanging there now,' replied the boy. 

" ' Is it ? ' said Scrooge. - ' Go and buy it.' 

" ' Walk-ER 1 ' exclaimed the boy. 

" ' No, no,' said Scrooge : ' I am in earnest. Go, and 
buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give 
them the directions where to take it. Come back with 
the man, and I'll give jou a shilling. Come back with 
him in less than five minutes, and I'll give half a 
crown ! ' 

'' The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a 
steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off 
half so fast. 

" ' I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's,' whispered Scrooge, 
rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. ' He 
sha'n't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny 
Tim. Joe INIiller never made such a joke as sending it 
to Bob's will be ! ' 



262 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" The hand in which he wrote tlie address was not a 
steady one ; but write it he did, somehow, and went 
down stairs to open the street door, ready- for the com- 
ing of the poulterer's man. As he stood there, waiting 
his arrival, the knocker caught his eye. 

" ' I shall love it as long as I live ! ' cried Scrooge, 
patting it with his hand. ' I scarcely ever looked at it 
before. What an honest expression it has in its face ! 
It's a wonderful knocker ! Here's the turkey. Halloo ! 
Whoop ! How are you? Merry Christmas ! ' 

" It was a turkey ! He never could have stood upon 
his legs, that bird. He would have snapped 'em short 
off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax. 

" ' Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden 
Town,' said Scrooge. ' You must have a cab.' 

" The chuckle with which he said this, and the 
chuckle with which he paid for the turkey, and the 
chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle 
with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be 
exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breath- 
less in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried. 

" Shaving was not an easy task : for his hand con- 
tinued to shake very much ; and shaving requires at- 
tention, even when you don't dance while you are at it. 
But, if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have 
put a piece ot sticking-plaster over it, and been quite 
satisfied. 

" He dressed himself ' all in his best,' and at last got 



CHARLES DICKENS. 263 

out into the streets. The people were by this time 
pouring forth, as he had seen them witli the ghost of 
Christmas Present ; and, walking with his hands behind 
him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delightful smile. 
He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three 
or four good-humored fellows said, ' Good-morning, sir ! 
A merry Christmas to you ! ' And Scrooge said often 
afterwards, that, of all the blithe sounds he had ever 
heard, those were the blithest in his ears. 

" He had not gone far, when, coming on towards him, 
he beheld the portly gentleman who had walked into 
his counting-house the day before, and said, ' Scrooge 
and Marley's, I believe ? ' It sent a pang across his heart 
to think how this old gentleman would look upon him 
when they met ; but he knew what patli lay straight 
before him, and he took it. 

" ' My dear sir,' said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and 
taking the old gentleman by both his hands. ' How do 
you do ? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very 
kind of you. A merry Christmas to you, sir ! ' 

'"Mr. ScrooG^e?' 

" ' Yes,' said Scrooge. ' That is my name ; and I fear 
it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your 
pardon. And will you have the goodness ? ' — here 
Scrooge whispered in his ear. 

" ' Lord bless me ! ' cried the gentleman, as if his 
breath were taken away. ' My dear Mr. Scrooge, are 
you serious ? ' 



264 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

" ' If you please,' said Scrooge. ' Not a farthing less. 
A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure. 
Will you do me that favor ? ' 

'' ' My dear sir,' said the other, shaking hands with 
him. ' I don't know what to say to such munifi ' — 

" ' Don't say any thing, please,' retorted Scrooge. 
' Come and see me. Will you come and see me ? ' 

" ' I will,' cried the old gentleman. And it was clear 
he meant to do it. 

" ' Thank'ee,' said Scrooge. ' I am much obliged to 
you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you ! ' 

" He went to church, and walked about the streets, 
and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted 
the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and 
looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the 
windows, and found that every thing could yield Inm 
pleasure. He liad never dreamed that any walk, that 
any thing, could give him so much happiness. In the 
afternoon, he turned his steps towards his nephew's 
house. 

" He passed the door a dozen times before he had the 
courage to go up and knock ; but he made a dash, and 
did it. 

" ' Is your master at home, my dear ? ' said Scrooge to 
the girl. ' Nice girl. Very.' 

'' ' Yes, sir.' 

" ' Where is he, my love ? ' said Scrooge. 

" ' He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. 
I'll show you up stairs, if you please.' 



CHARLES DICKENS. 265 

" ' Thank'ee. He knows me,' said Scrooge, with his 
hand abeady on the dining-room lock. ' 111 go in here, 
my dear.' 

" He turned it gently, and sidled his face in round 
the door. They were looking at the table (which was 
spread out in great array) ; for these young housekeep- 
ers are always nervous on such points, and like to see 
that every thing is right. 

" ' Fred ! ' said Scrooge. 

" Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! 
Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting 
in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't have 
done it, on any account. 

" ' Why, bless my soul ! ' cried Fred. ' Who's that ? ' 

" ' It's I, — your Uncle Scrooge. I have come to din- 
ner. Will you let me in, Fred ? ' 

" Let him in ! It's a mercy he didn't shake his arm 
off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could 
be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did 
Topper when lie came. So did the plump sister when 
she came. So did every one when they came. Wonder- 
ful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won- 
derful happiness. 

" But he was early at the ofhce next morning. Oh ! 
he was early there. If he could only be there first, and 
catch Bob Cratchit coming late ! — that was the thing he 
had set his heart upon. 

" And he did it ; yes, he did ! The clock struck nine. 



266 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eigh- 
teen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat 
with his door wide open, that he might see him come 
into the Tank. 

" His hat was off before he opened the door ; his 
comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy, driving 
away with his pen as if he were trying to overtake nine 
o'clock. 

" ' Halloo ! ' growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice, 
as near as he could feign it. ' What do you mean by 
coming here at this time of day ? ' 

" ' I am very sorry, sir,' said Bob. ' I am behind my 
time.' 

" ' You are ! ' repeated Scrooge. ' Yes, I think you 
are. Step this way, sir, if you please.' 

" It's only once a year, sir,' pleaded Bob, appearing 
from the Tank. ' It shall not be repeated. I was mak- 
ing rather merry, yesterday, sir.' 

" ' Now, I tell you what, my friend,' said Scrooge. 
' I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer ; 
and therefore,' he continued, leaping from his stool, and 
giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered 
back into the Tank again, — ' and therefore I am about 
to raise your salary ! ' 

" Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. 
He had a momentary idea of knocldng Scrooge down 
with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the 
court for help and a strait-waistcoat. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 267 

" ' A merry Christmas, Bob ! ' said Scrooge, witli an 
earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped 
him on the back. ' A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good 
fellow, than I have given you for many a year ! Ill 
raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling 
family ; and we will discuss your affairs this very after- 
noon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop. Bob ! 
Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle, before 
you dot another z. Bob Cratchit ! ' 

" Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, 
and infinitely more ; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, 
he was a second father. He became as good a friend, 
as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old 
city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough 
in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the 
alteration in him : but he let them laugh, and little heed- 
ed them ; for he was wise enough to know that nothing 
ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some 
people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset ; 
and, knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, 
he tho Light it quite as well that they should wrinkle up 
their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive 
forms. His own heart laughed ; and that was quite 
enough for him. 

" He had no further intercourse with spirits, but lived 
upon the total-abstinence principle ever afterwards ; 
and it wa5 always said of him, that he knew how to 
keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the 



268 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

knowledge. ]\Iay that be truly said of us, and all of 
us ! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, ' God bless us, 
every one ! ' " 

The following is from " The Chimes," and conveys a 
solemn lesson to the soul : — 

" This was the belfry, where the ringers came. He 
had caught hold of one of the frayed ropes which hung 
down through apertures in the oaken roof. At first, he 
started, thinking it was hair ; then trembled at the very 
thought of waking the deep bell. The bells themselves 
were higher. Higher, Trotty, in his fascination, or in 
working out the sj)ell upon him, groped his way, — by 
ladders new and toilsomely ; for it was steep, and not too 
certain holding for the feet. 

" Up, up, up ; and climb and clamber : up, up, up, — 
higher, higher, higher up ! 

" Until, ascending through the floor, and pausing with 
his head just raised above its beams, he came among the 
bells. It was barely possible to make out their great 
shapes in the gloom ; but there they were, shadowy 
and dark and dumb. 

'' A heavy sense of dread and loneliness fell instantly 
upon him as he climbed into this airy nest of stone and 
metal. His head went round and round. He listened, 
and then raised a wild ' Halloo ! ' 

" ' Halloo ! ' was mournfully protracted by the echoes. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 269 

" Gidd}^ confused, and out of breatli, and frightened, 
Trotty looked about him vacantly, and sunk down in a 
swoon. 

" Black are the brooding clouds, and troubled the deep 
Avaters, when the sea of thought, first heaving from a 
calm, gives up its dead. Monsters uncouth and wild 
arise in premature, imperfect resurrection ; the several 
parts and shapes of different things are joined and mixed 
by chance : and when and how, and by what wonderful 
degrees, each separates from each, and every sense and 
object of the mind resumes its usual form, and lives 
again, no man — though every man is every day the 
casket of this type of the great mystery — can tell. 

" So when and how the darkness of the night-black 
steeple changed to shining light ; when and how the soli- 
tary tower was peopled with a myriad figures ; when 
and how the whispered ' Haunt and limit him,' breathing 
monotonously through his sleep or swoon, became a voice 
exclaiming in the waking ears of Trotty, ' Break his 
slumbers ; ' when and how he ceased to have a sluggish 
and confused idea that such things were companioning 
a host of others that were not, — there are no dates or 
means to tell. But awake, and standing on his feet 
upon the boards where he had lately lain, he saw this 
goblin sight. 

'' He saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had 
brought him, swarming with dwarf phantoms, spirits, 
elfin creatures of the bells. He saw them leaping, flying, 



270 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

dropping, pouring, from the bells witliout a pause. He 
saw tliem round him on the ground, above him in the 
air, clambering from him by the ropes below, looking 
down upon him from the massive iron-girded beams, 
peeping in upon him through the chinks and loopholes 
in the walls, spreading away and away from him in en- 
larging circles, as the water-ripples give place to a huge 
stone that suddenly comes plashing in among them. He 
saw them of all aspects and all shapes ; he saw them 
ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed ; he saw 
them young ; he saw them old ; he saw them kind ; he 
saw them cruel ; he saw them merry ; he saw them grin ; 
he saw them dance, and heard them sing ; he saw them 
tear their hair, and heard them howl ; he saw the air 
thick with them; he saw them come and go incessant- 
ly ; he saw them riding downward, soaring upward, 
sailing off afar, perching near at hand, — all restless, and 
all violently active. Stone and brick and slate and tile 
became transparent to him as to them. He saw them in 
the houses, busy at the sleepers' beds ; he saw them 
soothing people in their dreams ; he saw them beating 
them with knotted whips ; he saw them yelling in their 
ears ; he saw them playing softest music on their pillows ; 
he saw them cheering some with the songs of birds and 
the perfume of flowers; he saw them flashing awful 
faces on the troubled rest of others, from enchanted 
mirrors which they carried in their hands. 

" He saw these creatures, not only among sleeping 



CHARLES DICKENS. 271 

men, but waking also ; active in pursuits irreconcilable 
with one another, and possessing or assuming natures 
the most opposite. He saw one buckling on innumera- 
ble wings to increase his speed, another loading him- 
self with chains and weights to retard his. He saw 
some putting the hands of clocks forward, some putting 
the hands of clocks backward, some endeavoring to stop 
the clock entirely. He saw them representing, here a 
marriage-ceremony, there a funeral ; in this chamber an 
election, in that a ball. He saw, everywhere, restless 
and untiring motion. 

" Bewildered by the host of shifting and extraordinary 
figures, as well as by the uproar of the bells, which all 
this while were ringing, Trotty clung to a wooden pillar 
for support, and turned his white face here and there 
in mute and stunned astonishment. 

" As he gazed, the chime stopped. Instantaneous 
change ! The whole swarm fainted : their forms col- 
lapsed, their speed deserted them, they sought to fly, 
but, in the act of falling, died, and melted into air. No 
fresh supply succeeded them. One straggler leaped down 
pretty briskly from the surface of the great bell, and 
alighted on his feet ; but he was dead and gone before 
he could turn round. Some few of the late company 
who had gambolled in the tower remained there, spin- 
ning over and over a little longer ; but these became at 
every turn more faint and few and feeble, and soon 
went the way of the rest. The last of all was one small 



272 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

hunchback, who had got into an echoing corner, where 
he twirled and twirled, and floated by himself a long 
time ; showing such perseverance, that at last he dwin- 
dled to a leg, and even to a foot, before he finally retired ; 
but he vanished in the end, and then the tower was silent. 

" Then, and not before, did Trotty see in every bell a 
bearded figure of the bulk and stature of the bell, — in- 
comprehensibly, a figure and the bell itself, — gigantic, 
grave, and darkly watchful of him, as he stood rooted 
to the ground. 

" Mysterious and awful figures, resting on nothing ; 
poised in the night-air of the tower, with their draped 
and hooded heads merged in the dim roof; motionless 
and shadowy, — shadowy and dark, although he saw 
them by some light belonging to themselves (none else 
was there), each with its muffled hand upon its goblin 
mouth. 

'' He could not plunge down wildly through the open- 
ing in the floor ; for all power of motion had deserted 
him : otherwise he would have done so, — ay, would 
have thrown himself head foremost from the steeple- 
top, rather than have seen them watching him with eyes 
that would have waked and watched, although the pupils 
had been taken out. 

" Again, again, the dread and terror of the lonely 
place, and of the wild and fearful night that reigned 
there, touched him like a spectral hand. His distance 
from all help ; the long, dark, winding, ghost-beleaguered 



CHARLES DICKENS. 273 

wa}^ tliat lay between him and the earth on which men 
lived ; his being high, high, high, up there, where it had 
made him dizzy to see the birds fly in the da}', cut off from 
all good people, who at such an hour were safe at home, 
and sleeping in their beds, — all this struck coldly through 
him, not as a reflection, but a bodily sensation. Mean- 
time liis eyes and thoughts and fears were fixed upon 
the watchful figures, which, rendered unlike any figures 
of this world by the deep gloom and shade inwrapping 
and infolding them, as well as by their looks and forms, 
and supernatural hovering above the floor, were, never- 
theless, as plainly to be seen as were the stalwart oaken 
frames, cross-pieces, bars, and beams set up there to 
support the bells. These hemmed them in a very forest 
of hewn timber, from the entanglements, intricacies, 
and depths of which, as from among the boughs of a dead 
wood blighted for their phantom use, they kept their 
darksome and unwinkino: watch. 

" A blast of air — how cold and shrill ! — came moan- 
ing through the tower. As it died away, the great bell, 
or the goblin of the great bell, spoke. 

" ' What visitor is this ? ' it said. The voice was low 
and deep ; and Trotty fancied that it sounded in the 
other figures as well. 

" ' I thought my name was called by the chimes,' 
said Trotty, raising his hands in an attitude of supplica- 
tion. ' I hardly know why I am here, or how I came. 
I have listened to the chimes these many years. They 
have cheered me often.' 



274 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' And you have thanked them ? ' said the bell. 

" ' A thousand times ! ' cried Trotty. 

" ' How ? ' 

" ' I am a poor man,' faltered Trotty, ' and could only 
thank them in words.' 

" ' And always so ? ' inquired the goblin of the bell. 
' Have you never done us wrong in words ? ' 

" ' No ! ' cried Trotty eagerly. 

" ' Never done us foul and false and wicked wrong^ in 
words ? ' pursued the goblin of the bell. 

" Trotty was about to answer, ' Never ! ' But he 
stopped, and was confused. 

" ' The voice of Time,' said the phantom, ' cries to 
man. Advance ! Time is for his advancement and im- 
provement, for his greater worth, his greater happiness, 
his better life, his progress onward to that goal within 
its knowledge and its view, and set there in the period 
when Time and he began. Ages of darkness, wicked- 
ness, and violence, have come and gone, millions un- 
countable, have suffered, lived, and died, to point 
the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or 
stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which 
will strike the meddler dead, and be the fiercer and the 
wilder ever for its momentary check.' 

" ' I never did so to my knowledge, sir,' said Trotty. 
' It was quite by accident if I did. I wouldn't go to do 
it, I'm sure.' 

" ' Who puts into the mouth of Time, or of its ser- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 275 

vants,' said the goblin of the bell, ' a cry of lamentation 
for days which have had their trial and their failure, and 
have left deep traces of it which the blind may see, — a 
cry that only serves the present time, by showing men 
how mnch it needs their help when any ears can listen 
to regrets for such a past, — who does this, does a wrong. 
And you have done that wrong to us, the chimes.' 

" Trotty's first excess of fear was gone. But he had 
felt tenderly and gratefully towards the bells, as you 
have seen ; and, when he heard himself arraigned as one 
who had offended them so weightily, his heart was 
touched with penitence and grief. ■ 

" ' If you knew,' said Trotty, clasping his hands ear- 
nestly, — ' or perhaps you do know, — if you knew how 
often you have kept me company, how often you have 
cheered me up when I've Been low, how you were quite 
the plaything of my little daughter Meg (almost the only 
one she ever had) when first her mother died, and she 
and me were left alone, you won't bear mahce for a 
hasty word ! ' 

" ' Who hears in us, the chimes, one note bespeaking 
disregard, or stern regard, of any hope or joy or pain 
or sorrow of the many-sorrowed throng ; who hears us 
make response to any creed that gauges human passions 
and affections as it gauges the amount of miserable food 
on wliich humanity may pine and wither, — does us 
wrong. That wrong you have done us,' said the bell. 

" ' I have ! ' said Trotty. ' Oh, forgive me ! ' 



276 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

" ' AVho hears us echo the dull vermin of the earth ; 
the putters-down of crushed and broken natures, formed 
to be raised up higher than such maggots of the time 
can crawl or can conceive,' pursued the goblin of the 
bell, — ' who does so, does us wrong. And you have 
done us wrong.' 

" ' Not meaning it,' said Trotty. ' In my ignorance. 
Not meaning it I' 

" ' Lastly, and most of all,' pursued the bell, ' who 
turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his 
kind, abandons them as vile, and does not trace and 
track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which 
they fell from good, — grasping in their fall some tufts 
and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still 
when bruised and dying in the gulf below, — does wrong 
to Heaven and man, to time, and to eternity. And you 
have done that wrong.' " 

From the opening pages of the sweet fairy-tale of 
home, " The Cricket on the Hearth," the following is 
taken : — 

" The kettle began it ! Don't tell me what Mrs. 
Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle 
may leave it on record to the end of time that she 
couldn't say which of them began it ; but I say the 
kettle did. I ought to know, I hope. The kettle be- 
gan it full five minutes by the little Avaxy-faced Dutch 
clock in the corner before the cricket uttered a chirp. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 277 

" As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the 
convulsive little haymaker at the top of it, jerldng 
away right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish 
palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary 
grass before the cricket joined in at all ! 

" Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows 
that. I wouldn't set my own opinion against the opinion 
of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any ac- 
count whatever. Nothing should induce me ; but this 
is a question of fact. And the fact is, that the kettle 
began it, at least five minutes before the cricket gave 
any sign of being in existence. Contradict me, and I'll 
say ten. 

" Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should 
have proceeded to do so in my very first word, but for 
this plain consideration, — if I am to tell a story, I must 
begin at the beginning ; and how is it possible to begin 
at the beginning without beginning at the kettle ? 

" It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial 
of skill, you must understand, between the kettle and 
the cricket. And this is what led to it, and how it 
came about. 

" Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, 
and choking over the wet stones in a pair of pattens 
that worked innumerable rough impressions of the first 
proposition in Euclid all about the yard, — Mrs. Peery- 
bingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Presently re- 
turning, less the pattens (and a good deal less ; for they 



278 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

were tall, and Mrs. Peerybingie was but short), she set 
the kettle on the fire ; in doing which, she lost her tem- 
per, or mislaid it for an instant ; for the water, being 
uncomfortably cold, and in that slippy, slushy, sleety 
sort of state wherein it seems to penetrate through 
every kind of substance, patten-rings included, had 
laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and even splashed 
her legs. And when we rather plume ourselves (with 
reason too) upon our legs, and keep ourselves particu- 
larly neat in point of stocldngs, we find this, for the 
moment, hard to bear. 

" Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. 
It wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar ; 
it wouldn't hear of accommodating itself Idndly to the 
knobs of coal ; it would lean forward with a drunken air, 
and dribble — a very, idiot of a kettle — on the hearth ; 
it was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely 
at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peer}^- 
bingie's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, 
with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, 
dived sideways in, — down to the very bottom of the 
kettle. And the hull of ' The Royal George,' has never 
made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the 
water which the lid of that kettle emj)loyed against 
Mrs. Peerybingie before she got it up again. 

" It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then ; 
carrying its handle with an air of defiance, and cocking 
its spout pertly and mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingie, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 279 



as if it said, ' I won't boil. Nothing shall induce 
me!' 

" But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good-humor, 
dusted her chubby little hands against each other, and 
sat down before the kettle, laughing. Meantime, the 
jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and gleaming on the 
little haymaker at the top of the Dutch clock, until one 
might have thought he stood stock still before the Moor- 
ish palace, and nothing was in motion but the flame. 

*' He was on the move, however, and had his spasms, 
two to the second, all right and regular. But his suffer- 
ings when the clock was going to strike were frightful 
to behold ; and when a cuckoo looked out of a trap- 
door in the palace, and gave note six times, it shook 
him, each time, like a spectral voice, — or like a some- 
thing wiry, plucldng at his legs. 

" It was not until a violent commotion, and a whir- 
ring noise among the weights and ropes below him, had 
quite subsided, that this terrified haymaker became 
himself again. Nor was he startled without reason ; 
for these rattling, bony skeletons of clocks are very dis- 
concerting in their operation, and I wonder very much 
how any set of men, but, most of all, how Dutchmen, 
can have had a liking to invent them. There is a popu- 
lar belief that Dutchmen love broad cases, and much 
clothing for their own lower selves ; and they might 
know better than to leave their clocks so very lank and 
unprotected surely. 



280 LIFE AND WEITINGS OF 

" Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began to 
spend the evening. Now it was, that the kettle, grow- 
ing mellow and musical, began to have irrepressible 
gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal 
snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite 
made up its mind yet to be good compan}^ Now it 
was, that, after two or three such vain attempts to stifle 
its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all 
reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosey and 
hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale yet formed th^ 
least idea of. 

" So plain too ! Bless you, you might have under- 
stood it like a book, — better than some books you and 
I could name, perhaps. With its warm breath gushing 
forth in a light cloud which merrily and gracefully as- 
cended a few feet, then hung about the chimney-corner 
as its own domestic heaven, it trolled its song with that 
strong energy of cheerfulness, that its iron body hummed 
and stirred upon the fire ; and the lid itself, the recent 
rebellious lid, — such is the influence of a bright exam- 
ple, — performed a sort of jig, and clattered like a deaf 
and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use 
of its twin brother. 

" That this song of the kettle's was a song of invita- 
tion and welcome to somebody out of doors, — to some- 
l)ody at that moment coming on tOAvards the snug, small 
home and the crisp fire, — there is no doubt whatever. 
Mrs. Peerybingie knew it perfectly, as she sat musing 



CHARLES DICKENS. 281 

before tlie lieartli. It's a dark night, sang the kettle, 
and the rotten leaves are lying by the way ; and, above, 
all is mist and darkness, and, below, all is mire and 
clay: and there's only one relief in all the sad and 
murky air ; and I don't know that it is one ; for it's 
nothing but a glare of deep and angry crimson, where 
the sun and wind together set a brand upon the clouds 
for being guilty of such weather ; and the widest open 
country is a long, dull streak of black ; and there's hoar- 
frost on the finger-post, and thaw upon the track ; and 
the ice it isn't water, and the water isn't free ; and you 
couldn't say that any thing is what it ought to be. But 
he's coming, coming, coming ! — 

" And here, if you like, the cricket did chime in 
with a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup, of such magnitude, by 
way of chorus ; with a voice so astoundingly dispropor- 
tionate to its size, as compared with the kettle, (size ! 
you couldn't see it ! ) that if it had then and there 
burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a 
victim on the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty 
pieces, it would have seemed a natural and inevitable 
consequence, for which it had expressly labored. 

" The kettle had had the last of its solo performance. 
It persevered with undiminished ardor ; but the cricket 
took first fiddle, and kept it. Good heaven, how it 
chirped ! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded 
through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer 
darkness like a star. There was an indescribable little 



282 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

trill and tremble in it at its loudest, wliicli suggested its 
being carried off its legs, and made to leap again, by its 
own intense enthusiasm. Yet they went very well to- 
gether, the cricket and the kettle. The burden of the 
song was still the same ; and louder, louder, louder still, 
they sang it in their emulation. 

" The fair little listener — for fair she was, and young, 
though something of what is called the dumpling shape ; 
but I don't myself object to that — lighted a candle, 
glanced at the haymaker on the top of the clock, who 
was getting in a pretty average crop of minutes, and 
looked out of the window, where she saw nothing, owing 
to the darkness, but her own face imaged in the glass. 
And my opinion is (and so would yours have been) 
that she might have looked a long way, and seen noth- 
ing half so agreeable. When she came back, and sat 
down in her former seat, the cricket and the kettle were 
still keeping it up with a perfect fury of competition ; 
the kettle's weak side clearly being, that he didn't 
know when he was beat. 

'' There was all the excitement of a race about it. 
Chirp, chirp, chirp ! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, 
hum — m — m! Kettle making play in the distance, 
like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp ! Cricket round 
the corner. Hum, hum, hum — m — m ! Kettle stick- 
ing to him in his own way, — no idea of giving in. 
Chirp, chirp, chirp ! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, 
hum, hum — m — m I Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 283 

chirp, chirp ! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, 
hum, hum — m — m ! Kettle not to be finished. Until 
at last, they got so jumbled together in the hurry-skur- 
i}^, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the ket- 
tle chirped and the cricket hummed, or the cricket 
chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped 
and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head 
than yours or mine to have decided with any thing like 
certainty. But of this there is no doubt, — that the 
kettle and the cricket, at one and the same moment, and 
by some jDOwer of amalgamation best known to them- 
selves, sent each his fireside song of comfort streaming 
into a ray of tlie candle that shone out through the win- 
dow, and a long way down the lane. And this light, 
bursting on a certain person, who, on the instant, ap- 
proached towards it through the gloom, expressed the 
whole thing to him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, 
' Welcome home, old fellow ! Welcome home, my 
boy!' 

" This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, 
boiled over, and was taken off the fire." 

One brief passage from '^ The Battle of Life " is all 
which can here be given ; but this is significant in a time 
like this nineteenth century, fraught with " wars, and 
rumors of wars," on the battle-fields of the Old World 
and the New, and more full than ever of moral conflicts 
and victories. 



284 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' I've a great mincl to say it's a ridiculous world 
altogether, and there's nothing serious in it," observed 
the poor old doctor. 

" ' You might take twenty affidavits of it, if you chose, 
Anthony," said his sister ; ' but nobody would believe 
you with such eyes as those.' 

" ' It's a world full of hearts,' said the doctor, huGf<2:ins: 
his younger daughter, and bending across her to hug 
Grace (for he couldn't separate the sisters), ' and a 
serious world, with all its folly, — even with mine, which 
was enough to have swamped the whole globe ; and it 
is a world on which the sun never rises but it looks 
upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off 
against the miseries and wickedness of battle-fields ; and 
it is a world we need be careful how Ave libel, — Heaven 
forgive us ! — for it is a world of sacred mysteries ; and 
its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of 
his lightest image." 

This chapter, though already so long, cannot be closed 
without a few words from " The Haunted Man," which 
are dear to all those parents who have angels in the 
skies ; who say with " Mabelle," * that — 

" In that land where sin can ne'er defile, 
There waits for me this joy, — 
To find, amid that bright and glittering host, 
My angel blue-eyed boy. 

* Mrs. Moses G. Fanner. 



CHARLES DICKENS, 285 

A little wave thrown on tlie sea of life, 

But not its storms to breast ; 
Only a day to struggle with the tide, 

And then to be at rest." 



" In tlie few moments that elapsed while Milly silently 
took him to the gate, the chemist dropped into his chair, 
and covered his face with his hands. Seeing him thus 
when she came back, accompanied by her husband and 
his father (who were both greatly concerned for him), 
she avoided disturbing him, or permitting him to be dis- 
turbed, and kneeled down near the chair to put some 
warm clothing on the boy. 

" ' That's exactly where it is : that's what I always 
say, father,' exclaimed her admiring husband, — ' there's 
a motherly feeling in Mrs. William's breast that must 
and will have went ! ' 

" ' Ay, ay,' said the old man : ' you're right. My son 
William's right.' 

"'It happens all for the best, Milly dear, no doubt,' 
said Mr. William tenderly, ' that we have no children 
of our own ; and yet I sometimes wish you had one 
to love and cherish. Our little dead child that you 
built such hopes upon, and that never breathed the 
breath of life, — it has made you quiet-like, JMillj^' 

'' ' I am very happy in the recollection of it,' William 
dear,' she answered. ' I think of it every day.' 

" ' I was afraid you thought of it a good deal.' 

" ' Don't say afraid. It is a comfort to me, it speaks 



286 LIFE AND.WIilTINGS OF 

to me in so many different ways. The innocent thing 
that never lived on earth is like an angel to me, Wil- 
liam.' 

'' ' You are like an angel to father and me,' said Mr. 
William softly. ' I know that.' 

'' ' When I think of all those hopes I built upon it, 
and the many times I sat and pictured to myself the 
little smiling face upon my bosom that never lay there, 
and the sweet eyes turned up to mine that never opened 
to the light,' said Milly, ' I can feel a greater tenderness, 
I think, for all the disappointed hopes in which there is 
no harm. When I see a beautiful child in its fond 
mother's arms, I love it all the better, thinking that my 
child might have been like that, and might have made 
my heart as proud and happy.' 

" Redlaw raised his head, and looked towards her. 

" ' All through life, it seems by me,' she continued, 
' to tell me something. For poor neglected children, 
my little child pleads as if it were alive, and had a 
voice I knew, with which to speak to me. When I hear 
of youth in suffering or shame, I think that my child 
might have come to that, perhaps, and that God took it 
from me in his mercy. Even in age and gray hair, such 
as father's, it is present, saying that it, too, might have 
lived to be old, long and long after you and I were gone, 
and to have needed the respect and love of younger 
people.' 

" Her quiet voice was quieter than ever as she took 
her husband's arm, and laid her head against it. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 287 

" ' Children love me so, that sometimes I half fancy -^ 
it's a silly fancy, William — they have some way I don't 
know of, of feeling for my little child and me, and un- 
derstanding why their love is precious to me. If I have 
been quiet since, I have been more happy, William, 
in a hundred ways ; not least happy, dear, in this, 
that even when my little child was born and dead but 
a few days, and I was weak and sorrowful, and could 
not help grieving a little, the thought arose, that, if I 
tried to lead a good life, I should meet in heaven a 
bright creature who would call me mother.' 

" Redlaw fell upon his knees with a loud cry. 

u i Q Xhou,' he said, ' who, through the teaching of 
pure love, hast graciously restored me to the memory 
which was the memory of Christ upon the cross, and of 
all the good who perished in his cause, receive my 
thanks, and bless her ! " 

" Then he folded her to his heart ; and Milly, sobbing 
more than ever, cried, as she laughed, ' He is come back 
to himself ! He likes me very much indeed too ! Oh, 
dear, dear, dear me, here's another! ' 

" Then the student entered, leading by the hand a 
lovely girl, who was afraid to come. And Redlaw, so 
changed towards him, seeing in him and in his youthful 
choice the softened shadow of that chastening passage 
in his own life, to which, as to a shady tree, the dove so 
long imprisoned in his solitary ark might fly for rest and 
company, fell upon his neck, entreating them to be his 
children. 



288 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" Then, as Christmas is a time in which, of all times 
in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, 
wrong, and trouble in the world around us, should be 
active with us, not less than our own experiences for all 
good, he laid his hand upon the boy, and silently call- 
ing Him to witness who laid his hand on children in old 
time, rebuking, in the majesty of his prophetic knowl- 
edge, those who kept them from him, vowed to protect 
him, teach him, and reclaim him." 

No wonder, that, after reading these sweet Christmas- 
carols, the Rev. Mr. Murray thus apostrophized the de- 
parted author, and that tens of thousands echo his 
words : — 

" Nevermore will the bells ring at Christmas Eve but 
that to me a note of sadness will mingle with their 
chimes : for he who taught the world the lesson of the 
festival ; who, using it as a text, preached as no pulpit 
ever preached, a sermon of charit}^ and love ; the hand 
that touched the bells of England, and made the whole 
world melodious with Christian chimes, — is cold and 
motionless forever. Farewell, gentle spirit ! thou wast 
not perfect until now. Thou didst have thy passions, 
and thy share of human errors ; but death has freed 
thee. Thou art no longer trammelled. Thou art de- 
livered out of bondage ; and thy freed sj^irit walks in 
glory. Though dead, thou speakest. Thy voice is 



CHARLES DICKENS. . 289 

universal in its reacli. The ages will be thy audience. 
Thy memory will be as a growing wreath above thy 
grave : it will take root in the soil that covers thee, 
and with the years renew its blossoms and its leaves 
perennially." 



CHAPTER IX. 

WHAT ARE THE WILD WAVES SAYING? 
The Daily News. — Dombey and Son. — Death of Little Paul. 

'* 'Tis the voice of the great Creator 
That dwells in that mighty tone." 

Anonymods. 

" The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than th* 
mighty waves of the sea." — Ps. xciii. 4. 

HEN Mr. Dickens returned to London 
from Italy, he tried the experiment of 
publishing a daily newspaper. He gath- 
ered about him a brilliant staff of writers, 
of whom he was the chief, and issued on 
Jan. 21, 1846, the first number of " The Daily News," 
a paper liberal in its politics, and of high literary 
character. In this paper he published a column a day 
of his sketches from Italy. But this new speculation 
did not prove a success, and soon passed into the hands 
of another. The vocation of Mr. Dickens was that of 
a novelist ; and the drudgery of a daily editor's life was 
not so pleasant or so profitable for him. The chief 
editor of " The Daily J^ews " could not find time or 

290 




CHARLES DICKENS. 291 

strength for new novels, and therefore it was well for 
the world of readers when the novel-writer returned to 
the vocation for which he was specially fitted ; and 
during the years 1847 and 1848 appeared " Dealings 
with the Firm of Dombey and Son." This interesting 
novel vv^as written during a sojourn in Switzerland and 
France ; and the closing paragraph of its preface is a con- 
fidential reminiscence which is now tenderly cherished. 

" I began tliis book," Mr. Dickens says, after an obser- 
vation upon the character of Mr. Dombey, " by the 
Lake of Geneva, and went on with it for some months 
in France. The association between the writing and 
the place of writing is so strong in my mind, that at this 
day, although I know every chair in the little midship- 
man's house, and could swear to every pew in the 
church in which Florence was married, or to every 
young gentleman's bedstead in Dr. Blimber's establish- 
ment, I yet confusedly imagine Capt. Cuttle as seclud- 
in^r himself from Mrs. Mac StinQ-er among^ the moun- 

CD O O 

tains of Switzerland. Similarly, Avhen I am reminded 
by any chance of what it was that the waves- were 
always sayilig, I wander in my fancy for a whole win- 
ter night about the streets of Paris, — as I really did, 
with a heavy heart, on the night when my little friend 
and I parted forever.' " 

Mr. Perkins, in his biography of Mr. Dickens, thus 



292 LIFE AND WAITINGS OF 

refers to " Dombey and Son," and says, that, " like 
' Martin Chuzzlewit,' it has what may be called a distinct 
moral unity, resulting from the shaping of the characters 
and the story so as to teach a definite moral lesson. In 
' Chuzzlewit,' this lesson is the evil of selfishness ; and in 
the combining of this one quality with all the other 
qualities of so many of the characters, so that it colors 
both what is good and what is bad in them, very great 

power and skill are shown 

" The place of selfishness in ' Martin Chuzzlewit ' is 
occupied by pride in ' Dombey and Son ; ' and although 
the evil quality is not exhibited in so many phases and 
persons, yet its power and its unhappy consequences are 
developed, in the frightful strife between the ill-matched 
Dombey and his wife, with a gloomy intensity that 
teaches its lesson most effectively." 

The account which Mr. Dickens gave of the sisterly 
kindness of Florence Dombey has proved an incentive 
to many a young heart, as it has felt itself called to 
assist others in the family circle. This is it : — 

" O Saturdays ! O happy Saturdays ! when Flor- 
ence always came at noon, and never would, in any 
weather, stay away, though Mrs. Pipchin snarled and 
growled and worried her bitterly. Those Saturdays 
were sabbaths for at least two little Christians among 
all the Jews, and did the holy sabbath-work of strength- 
ening and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 293 

" Not even Sunday nights — the heavy Sunday nights, 
whose shadow darkened the first waking burst of light 
on Sunday mornings — could mar those precious Satur- 
days. Whether it was the great seashore, where they 
sat and strolled together, or whether it was only Mrs. 
Pipchin's dull back-room, in which she sang to him so 
softly, with his drowsy head upon her arm, Paul never 
cared. It was Florence : that was all he thought of. 
So on Sunday nights, when the doctor's dark door stood 
agape to swallow him up for another week, the time Avas 
come for taking leave of Florence, — no one else. . . . 

" Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night Avith 
Florence, from walking back with Paul to the doc- 
tor's, when Florence took from her bosom a little 
piece of paper on which she had pencilled down some 
words. 

" ' See here, Susan,' she said. ' These are the names 
of the little books that Paul brings home to do those 
long exercises with when he is so tired. I copied them 
last night while he was writing.' 

" ' Don't show 'em to me. Miss Floy, if you please,' 
returned Nipper. ' I'd as soon see Mrs. Pipchin.' 

" ' I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, 
to-morrow morning. I have money enough,' said Flor- 
ence. . . . 

" ' Well, miss, and why do you want 'em ? ' replied 
Nipper ; adding, in a lower voice, ' if it was to fling at 
Mrs. Pipchin's head, I'd buy a cart-load.' 



294 LIFE AND WETTINGS OF 

" ' I think I could, perhaps, give Paul some help, 
Susan, if I had these books,' said Florence, ' and make 
the coming week a little easier to him. At least, I want 
to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I will never for- 
get how kind it was of you to do it.' 

" It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nip- 
per's that could have rejected the little purse Florence 
held out with these words, or the gentle look of entreaty 
with which she seconded her petition. Susan put the 
purse in her pocket without reply, and trotted out at 
once upon her errand. 

" The books were not easy to procure ; and the an- 
swer at several shops was, either that they were just out 
of them, or that they never kept them, or they had had 
a great many last month, or that they expected a great 
many next week. But Susan was not easily baffled in 
such an enterprise ; and having entrapped a white- 
haired youth, in a black calico apron, from a library 
where she was known, to accompany her in her quest, 
she led him such a life in going up and down, that he 
exerted himself to the utmost, if it Avere only to get 
rid of her, and finally enabled her to return home in 
triumph. 

'' With these treasures, then, after her own daily les- 
sons were over, Florence sat down at night to track 
Paul's footsteps through the thorny ways of learning ; 
and being possessed of a naturally quick and sound 
capacity, and taught by that most wonderful of mas- 



i 



CHARLES DICKENS. 295 

ters, love, it was not long before she gained upon Paul's 
heels, and caught and passed him. 

" Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs. Pipchin : 
but many a night when they were all in bed ; and when 
Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers and herself asleep 
in some uncomfortable attitude, reposed unconscious by 
her side ; and when the chinking ashes in the grate were 
cold and gray ; and when the candles were burnt down 
and guttering out, — Florence tried so hard to be a sub- 
stitute for one small Dombey, that her fortitude and 
perseverance might have almost won her a free right to 
bear the name herself. 

" And high was her reward, when one Saturday even- 
ing, as little Paul was sitting down as usual to ' resume 
his studies,' she sat down by his side, and showed him 
all that was so rough made smooth, and all that was so 
dark made clear and plain before him. It was nothing 
but a startled look in Paul's wan face, — a flush, a 
smile, and then a close embrace ; but God knows 
how her heart leaped up at this rich payment for her 
trouble. 

'^ ' O Floy ! ' cried her brother. ' How I love you ! 
How I love you, Floy ! ' 

" ' And I you, dear ! ' 

'' 'Oh! I am sure of that, Floy.' 

"He said no more about it ; but all that evening sat 
close by her, very quiet ; and in the night he called out 
from his Httle room within hers, three or four times, that 
he loved her. 



296 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit 
down with Paul on Saturday night, and patiently assist 
him through so much as they could anticipate together 
of his next week's work." 

The chapter treating of little Paul's last hours is very 
touching and solemn. It is as follows : — 

" Paul had never risen from his little bed. He lay 
there, listening to the noises in the street, quite tran- 
quilly ; not caring much how the time went, but watch- 
ing it, and watching every thing about him, Avith ob- 
serving eyes. 

" When the sunbeams struck into his room throuo^h 
the rustling blinds, and quivered on the opposite wall 
like golden Avater, he knew that evening was coming on, 
and that the sky was red and beautiful. As the reflec- 
tion died away, and a gloom went creeping up the wall, 
he w^atched it deepen, deepen, deepen, into night. Then 
he thought how the long streets were dotted with lamps, 
and liow the peaceful stars were shining overhead. His 
fancy had a strange tendency to wander to the river, 
which he knew was flowing through the great city ; and 
now be thought how black it was, and how deep it would 
look reilecting the hosts of stars, and, more tlian all, 
liovv^ steailily it rolled away to meet the sea. 

'' As it grew later in the night, and footsteps in the 
street became so rare that he could hear them coming, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 297 

count them as they passed, and lose them in the hollow 
distance, he would lie and count the many-colored rings 
around the candle, and wait patiently for da}^ His 
only trouble was the swift and rapid river. He felt 
forced, sometimes, to try to stop it, — to stem it with 
his childish hands, or choke its way with sand ; and, 
when he saw it coming on resistless, he cried out. But 
a Avord from Florence, who was always at his side, re- 
stored him to himself ; and, leaning his poor head upon 
her breast, he told Floy of his dream, and smiled. 
When day began to dawn again, he watched for the 
sun ; and, when its cheerful light began to sparkle in 
the room, he pictured to himself —pictured ! he saw — the 
high church-towers rising up into the morning sky, 
the town reviving, waking, starting into life once more, 
the river glistening as it rolled (but rolling fast as ever), 
and the country bright with dew. Familiar sounds and 
cries came by degrees into the street below ; the servants 
in the house were roused and busy ; faces looked in at 
the door ; and voices asked his attendants softly how he 
was. Paul always answered for himself, ' I am better : 
I am a great deal better ! thank you. Tell papa so.' Bv 
little and little, he got tired of the bustle of the day, — 
the noise of carriages and carts, and people passing and 
repassing, — and would fall asleep, or be troubled with a 
restless and uneasy sense again — the child could hardly 
tell whether this were in his sleeping or waking mo- 
ments — of that rushing river, 'Why will it never 



298 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

stop, Flo}' ? ' lie would sometimes ask lier. ' It is bearing 
me away, I think.' 

"But Flo}'- could always soothe and re-assure him ; 
and it was his daily delight to make her lay her head 
down on his pillow, and take some rest. 

" ' You are always watching me, Floy : let me watch 
you now.' They would prop him up with cushions in 
a corner of his bed ; and there he would recline the 
while she lay beside him, bending forward oftentimes to 
kiss her, and whispering to those who were near, that 
she was tired, and how she had sat up so many nights 
beside him. Thus the flush of the day, in its heat and 
its light, would gradually decline ; and again the golden 
water would be dancing on the wall. 

" He was visited by as many as three grave doctors 
(they used to assemble down stairs, and come up to- 
gether) ; and the room was so cpiiet, and Paul was so 
observant of them (though he never asked of anybody 
what they said), that he even knew the difference in 
the sound of their watches. But his interest centred 
in Sir Parker Peps, who always took his seat on the 
side of the bed. For Paul had heard them say, long 
ago, that the gentleman had been with his mamma when 
she clasped Florence in her arms and died ; and he could 
not forget it now. He liked him for it. He was not 
afraid. 

'' The people round him changed' as unaccountably as 
on that first night at Dr. Blimber's (except Florence ; 



CHARLES DICKENS. 299 

Florence never changed) ; and what had been Sir Pai;- 
ker Peps was now his father, sitting with his head upon 
his hand. Old Mrs. Pipchin, dozing in an easy-chair, 
often changed to Miss Fox or his aunt ; and Paul was 
quite content to shut his eyes again, and see what hap- 
pened next without emotion. But this figure, with its 
head upon its hand, returned so often, and remained so 
long, and sat so still and solemn, never speaking, never 
being spoken to, and rarely lifting up its face, that Paul 
began to wonder languidly if it Avere real, and in the 
niorht-time saw it sittino^ there with fear. 

" ' Floy,' he said, ' what is that ? ' 

" ' Where, dearest ? ' 

" ' There, at the bottom of the bed.' 

" ' There's nothing there, except papa.' 

" The figure lifted up its head, and rose, and, coming 
to the bedside, said, ' My own boy, don't you know 
me?' 

" Paul looked it in the face, and thought. Was this 
his father? But the face so altered, to his thinking, 
thrilled, as he gazed, as if he were in pain ; and before he 
could reach out both his hands to take it between them, 
and draw it towards him, the figure turned away quickly 
from the little bed, and went out at the door. 

" Paul looked at Florence with a fluttering heart ; but 
he knew what she was going to say, and stopped her 
with his face against her lips. The next time he ob- 
served the figure sitting at the bottom of the bed, he 
called to it, — 



300 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

. " ' Don't be sorry for me, dear papa ! Indeed, I am 
quite happy ! ' 

" His father, coming, and bending down to him, 
wliich he did quickly, and without first pausing by the 
bedside, Paul held him round the neck, and repeated 
those words to him several times, and very earnestly ; 
and Paul never saw him in his room at any time, 
whether it were day or night, but he called out, ' Don't 
be so sorry for me ! Indeed, I am quite happy ! ' This 
was the beginning of his always saying in the morning 
that he was a great deal better, and that they were to 
tell his father so. 

" How many times the golden water danced upon the 
wall, how many nights the dark, dark river rolled to- 
wards the sea in spite of him, Paul never counted, 
never sought to know. If their kindness, or his sense 
of it, could have increased, they were more kind, and he 
more grateful, every day ; but whether they were many 
days or few appeared of little moment now to the 
gentle boy. 

" One night he had been thinking of his mother, and 
her picture in the drawing-room down stairs, and 
thought she must have loved sweet Florence better 
than his father did, to have held her in her arms when 
she thought she was dying ; for even he, her brother, 
who had such dear love for her, could have no greater 
wish than that. The train of thought suggested to -him 
to inquire if he had ever seen his mother ; for he could 



CHAKLES DICKENS. 301 

not remember whether they had told hnn yes or no, the 
river running very fast, and confusing his mind. 

" ' Floy, did I ever see mamma ? ' 

" ' No, darling, why ? ' 

" ' Did I ever see any kind of face like mamma's look- 
ing at me when I was a baby, Floy ? ' 

" He asked incredulously, as if he had some vision of 
a face before him. 

" * Oh, yes, dear ! ' 

" ' Whose, Floy ? ' 

" ' Your old, old nurse's : often.' 

" ' And where is my old nurse ? ' said Paul. ' Is she 
dead too ? Floy, are we all dead except you ? ' 

'' There was a hurry in the room for an instant, — 
longer, perhaps ; but it seemed no more, — then all still 
again ; and Florence, with her face quite colorless, but 
smiling, held his head upon her arm. Her arm trembled 
very much. 

" ' Show me the old nurse, Floy, if you please ? ' 

" ' She is not here, darling. She shall come to- 
morrow.' 

" ' Thank you, Floy ! ' 

" Paul closed his eyes with these words, and fell asleep. 
When he awoke, the sun was high, ^nd the broad day 
was clear and warm. He lay a little while, looking at 
the windows, which were open, and the curtains rustling 
in the air, and waving to and fro ; then he said, 
* Floy, is it to-morrow ? Is she come ? ' 



302 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

" Some one seenjed to go in quest of her. Perhaps it 
was Susan. Paul thought he heard her telling him, 
when he closed his eyes again, that she would soon be 
back ; but he did not open them to see. She kept her 
word, — perhaps she had never been away ; but the 
next thing that happened was a noise of footsteps on the 
stairs, and then Paul woke, — woke mind and body, — 
and sat upright in his bed. He saw them now about 
him. There was no gray mist before them, as there 
had been sometimes in the night. He knew them every 
one, and called them by their names. 

" ' And who is this ? Is this my old nurse ? ' said 
the child, regarding with a radiant smile a figure coming 
in. 

" Yes, yes. No other stranger would have shed those 
tears at the sight of him, and called him her boy, her 
pretty boy, her own poor slighted child. No other 
woman would have stooped down by his bed, and taken 
up his Avasted hand, and put it to her lips and breast as 
one who had some right to fondle it. No other Avoman 
would have so forgotten everybody else but him and 
Floy, and been so full of tenderness and pity. 

" ' Floy, this is a kind, good face,' said Paul. ' I am 
glad to see it again. Don't go away, old nurse ; stay 
here.' 

" His senses were all quickened ; and he heard a name 
he knew. 

" ' Who was that who said, " Walter " ? ' he asked, and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 303 

looked around. ' Some one said, " AValter." Is he here ? 
I should like to see him very much.' 

" Nobody replied directly ; but his father soon said to 
Susan, '• Call him back, then ; let him come up.' After 
a short pause of expectation, during which he looked 
with smiling interest and wonder on his nurse, and saw 
that she had not forgotten Floy, Walter was brought 
into the room. His open face and manner, and his 
cheerful eyes, had always made him a favorite with 
Paul ; and, Avhen Paul saw him, he stretched out his 
liand, and said, ' Good-by ! ' 

" ' Good-by, my child ! ' cried Mrs. Pipchin, hurrying 
to his bed's head. ' Not good-by ? ' 

" For an instant, Paul looked at her with the wistful 
face with which he had so often gazed upon her in his 
corner by the fire. ^ Ah, yes I ' he said placidly, ' good- 
by ! Walter, dear, good-by ! ' turning his head to where 
he stood, and putting out his hand again. ' Where is 
papa ? ' 

'' He felt liis father's breath upon his cheek before the 
words had parted from his lips. 

" ' Remember Walter, dear papa,' he whispered, look- 
ing in his face. ' Remember Walter. I was fond of 
Walter.' The feeble hand in the air, as if it cried 
' Good-by ! ' to Walter once again. 

'' ' Now lay me down again,' he said ; ' and, Floy, 
come close to me, and let me see you.' 

" Sister and brother wound their arms around each 



304 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

other ; and the golden light came streaming in, and fell 
upon them locked together. 

" ' How fast the river runs between its green banks 
and the rushes, Floy ! But it's very near the sea. I hear 
the waves. They always said so.' 

" Presently he told her that the motion of the boat 
upon the stream was lulling him to rest. How green 
the banks were now ! how bright the flowers growing on 
them ! and how tall the rushes ! Now the boat was out 
at sea, but gliding smoothly on ; and now there Avas a 
shore before him. Who stood on the bank ? 

" He put his hands together as he had been used to 
do at his prayers. He did not remove his arms to do it ; 
but they saw him fold them so behind her neck. 

" ' Mamma is like you, Floy. I know her by the face. 
But tell them that the print upon the stairs of school is 
not divine enough. The light about the head is shining 
as I go.' 

" The golden ripple of the wall came back again, and 
nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion, — 
the fashion that came in with our first garments, and 
will last unchanged until our race has run its course, 
and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll; the 
old, old fashion, — death ! 

" Oh ! thank God, all who see it, for that older fashion 
yet, — immortality. And look upon us, angels of young 
children, with regard not quite estranged, when the 
swift river bears us to the ocean." 



CHARLES DICKENS. 305 

The chapter containing the foregoing is headed in the 
novel, '^ What are the wild waves saying ? " 

A beautiful song has been written by some one with 
that title, which is twined with the memory of Dickens 
and little Paul. It wdll fitly close this chapter. 

' What are the wild waves saving, 

Sister, the -whole day long, 
That ever, amid our playing, 

I hear but their low, lone song ? 
Not by the seaside only 

(There it sounds Avild and free) ; 
But at night, when 'tis dark and lonely, 

In dreams it is still with me. 

* Brother, I hear no singing. 

'Tis but the rolling wave, 
Ever its lone course winging 

Over some ocean cave : 
'Tis but the noise of water 

Dashing against the shore ; 
A wind from some bleaker quarter 

Mingling with its roar. 

" No : it is something greater. 

That speaks to the heart alone. 
'Tis the voice of the great Creator 
That dwells in that mighty tone. 

" Yes : but the waves seem ever 

Singinjj the same sad thing ; 
And vain is my weak endeavor 

To guess what the surges sing. 
20 



306 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

What is that voice repeating 
Ever by night and day ? 

Is it a friendly greeting, 

Or a warning that calls away? 

" Brother, the inland mountain, 

Hath it not voice and sound ? 
Speaks not the dripping fountain 

As it bedews the ground ? 
E'en by the household ingle, 

Curtained and closed and warm, 
Do not our voices mingle 

With those of the distant storm ? 

" Yes ; but there's something greater 
That speaks to the heart alone : 
*Tis the voice of the great Creator 
That dwells in that mighty tone." 



CHAPTER X. 



HIS MASTERPIECE. 



The Reality of Fiction. — David Copperfield. — Opinion of Fraser's Magazine. 
The Shipwreck. — Uriah Heap. — Little Em'ly.— A Lone, Lorn Creetur. 



" The gnashing billows heaved and fell; 
Wild slirieked the midnight gale ; 
Far, far beneath the morning swell 
Were pennant, spar, and sail." 

O. W. HOLMKS. 

There is sorrow on the sea." — Jer. xlix. 23. 




SENSIBLE writer in " The Christian Ex- 
aminer" for September, 1863, discusses the 
utility and moral effect of the drama and 
the novel ; and, according to his method 
of argument, Charles Dickens was a bene- 
factor to the readers of " David Copperfield," and to 
those who have witnessed the touching drama of ''Lit- 
tle Em'ly," founded upon the same. 

The story-telling and the story-reading propensity are 
utterly indestructible ; and the following passages from 
that excellent article on " The Reality of Fiction " show 
where lies the dandier in the literature" of the imaoina- 



tion 



807 



308 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" This ever-increasing enlargement of the domain of 
that imaginative literature which already exists, or is to 
be given to the world, refutes all the fears and lamenta- 
tions about its decay and disappearance ; as if it were 
to be submerged and lost under the flooding sweep of a 
despotic and universal utilitarianism ; as if He who 
made the soul would allow its finest and most delicate 
powers to lie dormant, and rust out ; as if, under the 
Providence which arrays the lilies, piles up the splen- 
dors of ever-changing cloud-scenery, flashes across the 
north and up to the zenith the mystic brilliancy of the 
aurora, bends the rainbow-hues of hope, and garlands 
our daily bread with flowers, — as if, under this Provi- 
dence, so prodigal in dispensations of beauty, and ever 
revelling in infinite forms of grace, man will be suffered 
to degenerate into a worshippei" of macliinery, and an 
idolater of the golden calf. 

" When the parables are stricken from the Bible, 
when the story of Joseph ceases to be told, and David's 
lyrics are no longer chanted, then the curtain Avill fall 
upon the last drama, and the poet sing his last note to 
the deaf, and the novelist write his last romance for the 
blind. The realm of imagination to be annihilated ! — 
why, it came into existence when order came out of 
chaos, and was in the joyous song the morning stars 
saiici' tocrether. All races and all climes have colonized 
it. It is the realm of the spirit, wherein the spirit often 
lives its purest life, gets its sweetest expression, and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 309 

learns to transfigure the drudgery of the work-day world. 
It shares the spirit's immortality, and can never cease 
to be." 

"David Copperfield" is one of the greatest of the 
novels of Dickens. A writer in " Eraser's Magazine " 
for December, 1850, indicates the opinion of the Eng- 
lish concerning it. He says, " This, the last, is, in our 
opinion, the best of all the author's fictions. The plot 
is better contrived, and the interest more sustained, than 
in any other. Here there is no sickly sentiment, no 
prolix description, and scarcely a trace of exaggerated 
passion. The author's taste has become gradually more 
and more refined : his style has got to be more easy, 
graceful, and natural. The principal groups are delin- 
eated as carefully as ever ; but, instead of the elaborate 
Dutch painting to which we had been accustomed in his 
backgrounds and accessories, we have now a single 
vigorous touch here and there, which is far more artis- 
tic and far more effective. His winds do not howl, nor 
his seas roar, through whole chapters, as formerly: he 
has become better acquainted with his readers, and ven- 
tures to leave more to their imagination. This is the 
first time that the hero has been made to tell his own 
story, — a plan which generally insures something like 
epic unity for the tale. We have several reasons for 
suggesting that here and there, under the name of 
'David Copperfield,' we have been favored with pas- 



310 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

sages from tlie personal history, adventures, and expe- 
riences of Charles Dickens. Indeed, this conclusion is 
in a manner forced upon us by the peculiar professions 
selected for the ideal character, who is first a news- 
paper-reporter, and then a famous novelist. There is, 
moreover, an air of reality pervading the whole book, 
to a degree never attained in any of his previous works, 
and which cannot be entirely attributed to the mere form 
of narration. . . . David Copperfield the younger was 
born at Blunderstone, near Yarmouth, — there is really 
a village of that name. We do not know whether 
Charles Dickens was born there too : at all events, the 
number and minuteness of the local details indicate 
an intimate knowledge of and fondness for Yarmouth 
and its neighborhood." 

The only quotation from " David Copperfield " which 
will be given here is that portion where the wreck is 
described in language which will call up similar sights 
to many dwellers by the sea : — 

" It was broad day, — eight or nine o'clock ; the 
storm raging in lieu of the batteries, and some one 
knocking and calling at my door. 

" ' What is the matter ?' I cried. 

" ' A wreck, — close by ! ' 

" I sprung out of bed, and asked, ' What wreck ? ' 

" ' A schooner from Spain or Portugal, laden with 



CHARLES DICKENS. 311 

fj'uit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see lier ! 
It's thought, down on the beach, she'll go to pieces every 
moment.' 

" The excited voice went clamoring along the stair- 
case ; and I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as 
I could, and ran into the street. 

" Numbers of people were there before me, all run- 
ning in one direction, — to the beach. I ran the same 
way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing 
the wild sea. 

" The wind might by this time have lulled a little, 
though not more sensibly than if the cannonading I had 
dreamed of had been diminished by the silencing of half 
a dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea, having 
upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was 
infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. 
Every appearance it had then presented bore the ex- 
pression of being swelled ; and the height to which the 
breakers rose, and, looking over one another, bore one 
another down, and rolled in in interminable hosts, was 
most appalling. 

'' In the difficulty of hearing any thing but wind and 
waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confu- 
sion, and my first breathless efforts to stand against 
the weather, I was so confused, that I looked out to sea 
for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads 
of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman standing 
next me pointed with his bare arm (a tattooed arrow on 



6rJ LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

it pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then, O 
great Heaven ! I saw it close in upon us. 

" One mast was broken short off six or eight feet from 
the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze 
of sails and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship 
rolled and beat, — which she did without a moment's 
pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable, — beat 
the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were 
even then being made to cut this portion of the wreck 
away ; for as the ship, which was broadside on, turned 
towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her peo- 
ple at work with axes, — especially one active figure with 
long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. Bat a 
great cry, which was audible even above the wind and 
water, rose from the shore at this moment. The sea, 
sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, 
and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of 
such toys, into the boiling surge. 

" The second mast was yet standing, with the rags 
of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage 
flapping to and fro. • ' The ship had struck once,' the 
same boatman hoarsely said in my ears, ' and then lifted, 
and struck again.' I understood him to add, that she 
was parting amidships ; and I could readily suppose so, 
for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for 
any human work to suffer long. As he spoke, there 
was another great cry of pity from the beach : four 
men arose with the wreck out of the . deep, clinging to 



CHARLES DICKENS. 313 

tlie rigging of tlie remaining mast, — uppermost, the 
active figure with the curling hair. 

" There was a bell on board ; and as the ship rolled 
and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, — now 
showing us the whole sweep of her deck, as she turned 
on her beam-ends towards the shore ; now nothing but 
her keel, as she sprang wildly over, and turned towards 
the sea, — the bell rang ; and its sound, the knell of those 
unhappy men, was borne towards U3 on the wind. 
Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were 
gone. The agony on the shore increased ; men groaned, 
and clasped their hands ; women shrieked, and turned 
away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along 
the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I 
found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot 
of sailors whom I knew, not to let those two lost crea- 
tures perish before our eyes. 

" They were making out to me in an agitated way, — I 
don't know how; for the little I could hear I. was 
scarcely composed enough to understand, — that the 
life-boat had been bravely manned- an hour ago, and 
could do nothing ; and that, as no man would bo so 
desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope, and 
establish a communication with the shore, there was 
nothing left to try : when I noticed that some new 
sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them 
part, and Ham come brealdng through them to the front. 
I ran to him, as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for 



314 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

help. But distracted though I was by a sight so new to 
me, and terrible, the determination in his face, and his 
look out to sea, — exactly the same look as I remem- 
bered in connection with the morning after Em'ly's 
flight, — awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I 
held him back with both arms, and implored the men 
with whom I had been speaking not to listen to him, 
not to do murder, not to let him stir off that sand. 

" Another cry arose on shore ; and, looking to the 
wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat 
off the lower of the two men, and fly up in triumph 
around the active figure left alone upon the mast. 

" Against such a sight, and against such determination 
as that of the calmly-desperate man who was already 
accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as 
hopefully have entreated the wind. ' Mas'r Davy,' he 
said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, ' if my time 
is come, 'tis come : if 't'aint, I'll bide it. Lord above, 
bless you, and bless all ! Mates, make we ready ! I'm 
agoing off ! ' 

" I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, 
where the people around me made me stay ; urging, as I 
confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with 
help or without, and that I should endanger the precau- 
tions for his safety by troubling those with whom they 
rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they 
rejoined ; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men run- 
ning with ropes from a capstan that was there, and pene- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 315 

tfating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then 
I saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trou- 
sers, a rope in his hand or slung to his wrist, another 
round his body, and several of the best men holding, at 
a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself, 
slack upon the shore, at his feet. 

" The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was break- 
ing up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and 
that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a 
thread. Still he clung to it. He had a singular red 
cap on, — not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer color ; 
and as the few yielding planks between him and destruc- 
tion rolled and bulged, and his anticipative death-knell 
rung, he was seen by all to wave it. I saw him do it 
now, and thought I was going distracted, when his 
action brought an old remembrance to my mind of a 
once dear friend. 

'' Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the 
silence of suspended breath behind him, and the storm 
before, until there was a great retiring wave, when, 
with a backward glance at those who held the rope, 
which was made fast round his body, he dashed in 
after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water ; 
rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost be- 
neath the foam, then drawn again to land. They 
hauled in hastily. 

" He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from where 
I stood ; but he took no thought of that. He seemed 



816 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

hurriedly to give them some directions for leaving him 
more free, or so I judged from the motion of his arm, 
and was gone as before. 

" And now he made for the wreck, rising with the 
hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged 
foam, borne in towards the shore, borne on towards 
the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was 
nothing ; but the power of the sea and wind made the 
strife deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He was 
so near, that, with one more of his vigorous strokes, he 
would be clinging to it, when a high, green, vast 
hillside of water, moving on shoreward from beyond 
the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty 
bound, and the ship was gone ! 

" Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a 
mere cask had been broken in running to the spot 
where they were hauling in. Consternation was in 
every face. They drew him to my very feet, insen- 
sible, dead. He was carried to tlie nearest house ; 
and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, 
busy, wliile every means of restoration were tried : but 
he had been beaten to death by the great wave ; and his 
generous heart was stilled forever. 

" As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned, 
and all was done, a fisherman, who had known me when 
Em'ly and I were children, and ever since, whispered 
my name at the door. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 317 

" ' Sir,' said lie, with tears starting to his weather- 
beaten face, which, with his trembling hps, was ashy 
pale, ' will you come over yonder ? ' 

" The old remembrance that had been recalled to me 
was in his look. I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning 
on the arm he held out to support me, — 

" ' Has a body come ashore ? ' 

" He said, ' Yes.' 

" ' Do I know it ? ' I asked then. 

" He answered nothing. 

" But he led me to the shore. And on that part of it 
where she and I had looked for shells, two children, — 
on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the 
old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by 
the wind; among the ruins of the home he had 
wronged, — I saw him lying with his head upon his 
arm, as I had often seen him lie at school." 

The whole story of "David Copperfield " deserves 
perusal before any decision as to its real merits can be 
rendered ; and then one ought to see it dramatized, that 
the mean, cringing, despicable Uriah Heep, and the 
self-rehant, decided Betsey Trotwood, the great-hearted 
Peggotty, the fihal Agnes, and the poor Little Em'ly, 
might be fully comprehended. Nor should the " lone, 
lorn creetur," nor the irrepressible Mr. Micawber, ever 
looking for something to "turn up," be overlooked. 



318 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

Both novel and drama will make one bless the name of 
Charles Dickens, and write his name — 

" Among the few, the immortal names 
That were not born to die." 



CHAPTER XL 

RETURNS TO HIS EARLY PRACTICE. 
Bleak House. — Death of Poor Jo. — Uncommercial Traveller. 

" Ay I idleness I The rich folks never fail 
To find some reason why the poor deserve 
Their miseries." 

SOUTHEY. 

"For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, 
Baith the Lord : I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him." — Ps. xii. 5. 

WO years after " David Copperfield " 
found a warm greeting from the jjublic, 
Mr. Dickens gave " Bleak House " to the 
world; which novel met a cooler recep- 
tion. In this book, Mr. Dickens seemed 
to return to his early practice of writing with some 
definite purpose ; and, " though Skimpole and Boy thorn 
were genial caricatures of the external peculiarities and 
individual mannerisms of Leigh Hunt and Walter Sav- 
age Landor, the purpose of the novel was to satirize 
the dilatory procedure of the court of chancery." So 
says one writer ; and another adds, " It was thought by 
many that this work was of a second grade ; that it did 

819 




320 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

not show so miicli force of thought, strength of repre- 
sentation, brilliancy of fancy and of style, in short, 
not so much of any of its author's great qualities, as 
the previous novels. Yet, if any distinction can be 
drawn between the two series of works, it is probably 
only in the quantity of gayety and humor in them. 
Whatever the power of the serious characters of the 
later novels, as compared with the earlier, the mirthful 
element is far less frequent in the later." 

C. C. Terry, in " The Christian Leader,'' thus refers 
to Mr. Dickens and to " Bleak House." 

" The great secret of the success of Dickens was, 
that all of his characters were human and real. . . . 

" Dickens was the foe of all shams ; but instead of 
using the keen blade of satire, like his great contem- 
porary, Thackeray, he brought to bear the sunshine of 
his humor on the wrongs of his times. . . . Shakspeare, 
in the whole range of his delineation of character, has 
produced no creation like Little Nell or Paul Dom- 
bey ; nor has Sir Walter Scott, with the splendor of 
kings and princes, and the pomp of tournaments, in all 
the pages of his productions written a scene like the 
death of Poor Jo, in ' Bleak House.' 

" ' It's time for me to go to that there berrjdn'-ground, 
sir,' he returns, with a wild look. 

" ' Lie down, and tell me. What burying-ground, 
Jo?' 



CHARLES DICKENS. 321 

" ' Where they laid him as was wery good to me ; 
wery good to me indeed, he was. It's time for me to 
go down to that there berryin'-ground, sir, and ask to 
be put along with him.' 

" ' By and by, Jo, by and by.' 

" ' Ah ! p'raps they wouldn't do it if I wos to go my- 
self. But Avill you promise to have me took there, sir, 
and have me laid along with him ? ' 

" ' I will, indeed.' 

" ' Thankee, sir, thankee, sir ! They'll have to get 
the key of the gate afore they can take me in ;, for it's 
alius locked. And there's a step there, as I used for to 
clean with my broom. It's turned wery dark, sir. Is 
there any light a-comin' ? ' 

" 'It is coming fast, Jo.' 

" ' Fast ! The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the 
rugged road is very near its end.' 

" ' Jo, my poor fellow ! ' 

" ' I hear you, sir, in the dark ; but I'm a-gropin', 
a-gropin' : let me catch hold of your hand.' 

" ' Jo, can you say what I say ? ' 

" ' I'll say any think as you say, sh; for I know it's 
good.' 

" ' Our Father.' 

" ' Our Father, — yes, that's wery good, sir.' 

u i WJiich art in heaven.' 

" ' Art in heaven, — is the light a-comin', sir ? ' 

" ' It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name." 

21 



322 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" ' Hallowed be — thy — name.' 

" The light is come upon the dark benighted way. 
Dead ! 

" ' Dead, j^our Majesty ; dead, my lords and gentle- 
men ; dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of 
every order ; dead, men and Avomen born with heavenly 
compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us 
every day.' " 

Well does Mr. Terry say, " Two nations mourn for 
the loss of Charles Dickens ; but we cannot miss him 
now as much as we shall when Christmas comes. When 
the snow is on the ground, and tlirough the naked 
branches of the trees the red light of Christmas Eve 
fades slowly away, and darkness settles down, and the 
great stars come out one by one, we shall ask for the 
enchantment of his genius ; and the only answer will be 
the gloom of the night that has gathered around his 
tomb in Westminster Abbey. But when the Christmas 
chimes are rung, and the glad notes of the bells peal 
out upon the frosty air, let us not forget the lessons of 
Christian charity That Charles Dickens has taught to the 
world." 

Very sensibly does '' The Boston Journal " remark, — 

; " We trust, that, amid all the dispute which has raged 
= as to the religious and other peculiarities of Charles 



CHARLES DICKENS. 323 

Dickens, the true example of his life as a conscientious 
and indefatigable worker will not be lost upon the young 
of this generation. . . . His habits of labor were regu- 
lar as those of a book-keeper or a bank-clerk, and 
certainly no less arduous. An artist who occupied the 
same room with him for some time was surprised at the 
anxious assiduity with which he prosecuted his writing. 
Said he, ' I looked in his face, and watched the anxiety 
and care. I saw the blotting and the re-writing of his 
works ; and I was astonished to find how much he owed 
to his indomitable perseverance.' " 



CHAPTER XII. 

LATER WORKS. 
Little Dorritt. — Hard Times. —Dr. Marigold. 

" And the winds and the waters 

In pastoral measures 
Go winding around us, with roll upon roll, 

Till the soul lies within 
In a circle of pleasures, 

"Which hideth the soul." 

Miss Barrett. 

• As the mountains are round about Jerusalem ; so the Lord is round about his 
people from henceforth, even forever." — Ps. cxv. 2. 

FTER ''Bleak House" came "Little 
Dorritt," not so attractive as some of Mr. 
Dickens's books, but yet full of its own 
peculiar interest. It contains some fine 
descriptions, among which is one of a 
scene amid the Alps, for which we would gladly find 
space if possible. 

Among the serials afterwards published was one 
called " Hard Times ; " the first book of which is called 
" Sowing," the next " Reaping," the third " Garner- 
ing," and wherein Mr. Gradgrind achieves his immor- 
tality, — "a man of realities, a man of facts and 

824 




CHARLES DICKENS. 325 

calculations." In this occur the thrilling passages de- 
scribing poor Stephen's fall into the pit, and his rescue. 
Very touching are Stephen's words concerning the star 
which shone into the pit where he lay. And thus the 
tale concludes : — 

" The bearers being now ready to carry him away,* 
and the surgeon being anxious for his removal, those 
who had torches or lanterns prepared to go in front of 
the litter. Before it was raised, and while they were 
arranging how to go, he said to Rachael, looking upward 
at the star, — 

*' ' Often as I coom to myseln, and fouiTd it shinin' on 
me down there in my trouble, I thowt it were the star 
as guided to our Saviour's home. I awmust think 
it be the very star.' 

" They lifted him up ; and he was overjoyed to find 
that they were about to take him in the direction 
whither the star seemed to him to lead. 

" ' Rachael, beloved lass, don't let go my hand. We 
may walk toogether t'night, my dear.' 

" ' I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, 
Stephen, all the way.' 

" ' Bless thee I Will soombody be pleased to coover 
my face ? ' 

" They carried him very gently along the fields, and 
down the lanes, and over the wide landscape ; Rachael 
always holding the hand in hers. Very few whispers 



326 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral- 
procession. The star had shown him where to find the 
God of the poor; and, through humility and sorrow 
and forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer's rest." 

Among the shorter sketches by Dickens, gathered into 
'one volume in some editions of his works, as " Addi- 
tional Christmas Stories," was one which the writer 
of this memorial volume had the delight of hearing him 
read to his last Boston audience. It is called " Dr. 
Marigold," and is a mixture of humor and pathos. 
After telling of the deaf-and-dumb girl whom he 
adopted, and o*f her refusal to go away with her lover, 
Dr. Marigold pleasantly concludes with a narration of 
his peculiar manner of giving consent to the marriage ; 
then tells how lonely he was without Sophy ; and then, 
one Christmas Eve, how he ate his lonely dinner, and 
sat dreamily by his fireside. Then he says, — 

" Sophy's books so brought up Sophy's self, that I 
saw her touching face quite plainly before I dropped 
off dozing by the fire. This may be a reason why 
Sophy, with her deaf-and-dumb child in her arms, 
seemed to stand silent by me all through my nap. I was 
on the road, off the road, in all sorts of places, — north 
and south and west and east ; winds liked best, and winds 
liked least ; here and there, and gone astray ; over the 
hills, and far away, — and still she stood silent by me, with 



CHARLES DICKENS. 327 

her silent child in her arms. Even when I woke with 
a start, she seemed to vanish, as if she had stood by me 
in that very place only a single instant before. 

" I had started at a real sound ; and the sound was on 
the steps of the cart. It was the light, hurried tread of 
a child coming clambering up. That tread of a child 
had once been so familiar to me, that, for half a moment, 
I believed I was going to see a little ghost. 

" But the touch of a real child was laid upon the 
outer handle of the door ; and the handle turned, and 
the door opened a little way, and a real child peeped in, 
— a bright little comely girl with large dark ej^es. 

" Looking full at me, the tiny creature took off her 
mite of a straw hat ; and a quantity of dark curls fell all 
about her face. Then she opened her lips, and said in 
a pretty voice, — 

" ' Grandfather ! ' 
• " ' Ah, my God ! ' I cries out. * She can speak ! ' 

" ' Yes, dear grandfather ; • and I am to ask you 
whether there was ever any one that I remind you of.' 

" In a moment, Sophy was round my neck, as well as 
the child ; and her husband was a-Avringing my hand with 
his face hid, and we all had to shake ourselves together 
before we could get over it. And when we did begin 
to get over it, and I saw the pretty child a-talking, 
pleased and quick and eager and busy, to her mother in 
the signs that I had first taught her mother, the happy 
and yet pitying tears fell rolling down my face." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



AS AN EDITOR. 



Household Words. —All the Year Round. — Great Expectations. — Tale of Two 

Cities. 

" Nor need we power or splendor, 
Wide hall or lordly dome : 
The good, the true, the tender, — 
These form the wealth of home." 

Mrs. Hale. 

•' Let your speech he always with grace." — Col. iv. 6. 

EARTH and home has need of pleasant 
words, and words of wisdom. These Mr. 
Dickens sought to give in the periodicals 
of which he was editor. In 1850, he took 
charge of a weekly literary paper called 
" Household Words ;" and it became exceedingly popular. 
He showed that he was " abundantly competent to super- 
intend a periodical with regularity and efficiency ; to 
write, select, and edit with practical and workmanlike 
skill ; and to select judiciously, and conduct with kind- 
ness and decision, the necessary staff of subordinates." 
In 1857, owing to a disagreement with his publishers, 
Mr. Dickens discontinued " Household Words," and 

828 




CHARLES DICKENS. 829 

established " All the Year Round" mstead; havmg his 
old publishers, — Messrs. Chapman & Hall. His eldest 
son became chief assistant on this periodical shortly be- 
fore his death. Mr. Dickens was, in some sense, his own 
publisher. Mr. Smalley, in " The New-York Tribune," 
thus notices the fact : — 

" Messrs. Chapman & Hall's names appea*r on the 
titlepages of his books ; but they have been only Mr. 
Dickens's agents. He owned the copyright of every 
one of his novels. In early days, it is true, before his 
fame had increased, and before the property in any one 
of his novels had become a fortune, he had sold his 
rights as author in a considerable number of his books. 
All these he repurchased ; often by dint of great trouble, 
and by difficult negotiations, always at a price far beyond 
that which they had brought in the beginning. It was 
not only a matter of calculation with Mr. Dickens, it 
was a matter of pride. His books are his children : he 
did not want them in a stranger's hand, nor subject to 
the authority of anybody but their author. The copy- 
rights were much dispersed; and, when it became 
known that Mr. Dickens was bent on buying them up, 
the price, which was already high, advanced very 
considerably. The British book-publisher is just as 
capable of driving a hard bargain as his American rival ; 
and Mr. Dickens had to pay dearly for his discovery of 
that interesting fdct. At last he carried his point, and 



330 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

lield in liis own grasp, by a good legal title, all his earlier 
writings. With the latter he had never parted ; with 
none, I suppose, during the last twenty years. Every 
six months, Messrs. Chapman & Hall handed in their 
accounts. It was Mr. Dickens who settled the terms of 
publication, the form in which each successive edition 
should appear, and all other details. What is called the 
' Charles Dickens Edition ' was his idea, and his favorite, — 
not on account of its beauty or readableness, for it is print- 
ed compactly, in small type, but on account of its cheap- 
ness. What pleased him was, that everybody should be 
able to buy a complete set of his writings ; and so he had 
them all condensed into, I think, seventeen volumes, sepa- 
rately published, and sold at three shillings and six- 
pence each. He understood the market, studied it, and 
adapted the supply of his books to the demand. He 
told me, four years ago, that the copyright of each one 
of his books became every year more valuable ; that is, 
brought in more actual money." 

Of Mr. Dickens as an editor, " The London Daily 
News " says, " We believe we are correct in stating, 
that every article in ' Household Words ' and ' All the 
Year Round ' passed under the conductor's eye, and 
that every proof was read and corrected by him. It . 
was at one time the fashion to assume that ' conducted 
by Charles Dickens ' meant little more than a sleeping 
partnership, — as if Dickens could have been a sleeping 



CHARLES DICKENS. 331 

partner in any undertaking imder the sun. But those 
behind the scenes knew better ; and the readers of ' All 
the Year Round' may assure themselves that every 
word in it was, up to this date, read before publication 
by the great master whose name it bears. At this 
moment, the ' Particulars for next number, ' in the neat 
yet bold handwriting which it is impossible to mistake 
hang by the side of the empty office-desk." 

" His editorial position," Mr. Perkins says, " afforded 
him many opportunities of aiding authors of all kinds ; 
and very gladly and generously he used them. The rule 
of contributing anonymously had its disagreeable side ; 
and it prevented (for instance) Douglas Jerrold from 
writing for the weekly. ' But the periodical is anony- 
mous throughout,' remonstrated Dickens, one day, when 
he had been suggesting to Mr. Jerrold to write for it. 
' Yes,' replied the caustic wit, opening a number, and 
reading the title, ' " Conducted by Charles Dickens." I 
see it is — mononymous throughout.' There was some 
reason for this ; for Jerrold's name was worth money. 
. . . To young writers, the great novelist was acces- 
sible, and as kind as his exacting employments rendered 
it possible for him to be ; and very many are the papers 
to which he gave many a grace by the judicious touches 
of his magical pen." 

Mr. Dickens wrote a " Child's History of England," 
which is a well-prepared compendium for the young stu- 



332 LIFE AND WHITINGS OF 

dent, and may be read with advantage by older persons. 
The miscellaneous sketches prepared for these papers 
were published together by the name of " The Un- 
commercial Traveller," and met with a warm recep- 
tion. 

'' Great Expectations," and " A Tale of Two Cities," 
also appeared first as serials ; and the latter is counted 
the most intellectual of any of the works of Dickens. 
From the " Tale of Two Cities," there is only space 
here to present a slight sketch, which conveys a 
sweet and holy picture of childhood, and refutes the 
idea that Mr. Dickens thought irreverently of the Sa- 
viour : — 

" A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, 
— that corner where the doctor lived. Ever busily wind- 
inof the Gf-olden thread which bound her husband and 
her father and herself, and her old directress and com- 
panion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still 
house, in the tranquilly resounding corner,, listening to 
the echoing footsteps of years. 

" At first there were times, though she was a perfect- 
ly, happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall 
from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed ; for 
there was something coming in the echoes, something 
light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her 
heart too much. Fluttering hopes and'doubts — hopes 
of a love as yet unknown to her, doubts of her remain- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 333 

ing upon earth to enjoy that new delight — divided her 
breast. Among the echoes, then, there would arise the 
sonnd of footsteps at her own early grave ; and thoughts 
of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who 
would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and 
broke like waves. 

'' That time passed ; and her little Lucie lay on her bo- 
som. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the 
tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling 
words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the 
young mother at the cradle-side could always hear those 
coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny 
with a child's laugh ; and the divine Friend of children, 
to whom, in her trouble, she had confided hers, seemed to 
take her child in his arms as he took the child of old, 
and made it a sacred joy to her. 

" Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound 
them all together, weaving the service of her happy in- 
fluence through the tissue of all their lives, and making 
it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of 
years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her hus- 
band's step was strong and prosperous among them ; her 
father's firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of 
string, awakening the echoes, as an unruly charger, 
whip-corrected, snorting, and pawing the earth under 
the plane-tree in the garden ! 

" Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the 
rest, they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden 



334 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the 
worn face of a little boy, and he said with a radiant 
smile, ' Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorr}^ to leave you 
both, and to leave my pretty sister ; but I am called, 
and I must go ! ' — those were not tears all of agony that 
wetted his j^oung mother's cheek as the spirit departed 
from her embrace that had been intrusted to it. Suffer 
them, and forbid them not. They see my Father's face. 
O Father, blessed words I 

" Thus the rustling of an angel's wings got blended 
with the other echoes ; and they were not wholly of 
earth, but had in them that breath of heaven. Sighs of 
the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were 
mingled with them also ; and both were audible to Lucie 
in a hushed murmur, — like the breathing of a summer 
sea asleep upon a sandy shore, — as the little Lucie, com- 
ically studious at the task of the morning, or dressing a 
doll at her mother's footstool, chattered in the tongues 
of the two cities that were blended in her life." 



/•' 



CHAPTER XIV. 

AMERICAN POPULARITY. 
The Diamond Edition. — Portraits of Mr. Dickens. — Our Mutual Friend, 

" Give me the boon of love : . 

r 

Renown is but a breath, 
Whose loudest echo ever floats 
From out the halls of death." 

H. T. TUCKERMAN. 

" A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather 
than silver or gold." — Prov. xxii. 1. 

N America, the popularity of Mr. Dickens 
is now as great, probably, as in his own 
country. The picture-stores present his 
portrait in an endless variety of forms, — 
standing, sitting, writing. Magazines and 
weekly literary periodicals are illustrated with pictures of 
him and of his place of residence. The rich and the poor 
respect his memory ; for hearts everywhere in our broad 
land have been cheered and blessed by the writings of 
Charles Dickens. Even the prisoner in his cell has been 
blessed with the memory of his sweet, ennobling words. 
At the State Prison in Massachusetts, the convicts once 




333 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

were allowed a Christmas festival, wlien the warden,* 
read to them in the chapel from Dickens's " Christmas 
Carol." 

James T. Fields, his Boston publisher, bears testimony 
of Mr. Dickens, which would lead one to suppose this 
reading of his " Carol " to prisoners would especially 
delight his benevolent heart ; for as Mr. Fields testi- 
fies: — 

" When he came into the presence of squalid or de- 
graded persons, such as one sometimes encounters in 
almshouses or prisons, he had such soothing words to 
scatter here and there, that those who had been ' most • 
hurt by the archers' listened gladly, and loved him with- 
out knowing who it was that found it in his heart to 
speak so kindly to them." 

Various editions of the works of Dickens have been 
published in this country, of which the diamond edi- 
tion is perhaps the most popular. The books are 
small enough to take with one on a journey, and well 
illustrated ; while the type, though small, is clear, and 
easily read. '' Of the many portraits of Charles Dick- 
ens, that which has the approval of Dickens himself 
is by Eytingc, the illustrator of the diamond edi- 
tion, and published by Ticknor & Fields. The por- 

* Hon. Gideon Haynes, author of Prison-Life. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 337 

trait is as near faultless as art can make one. As the 
picture represents liiin, he is at his desk, pen in hand, 
the head turned a little one side, wonderfidly expres- 
sive of the state of mind when considering ' how to do 
it.'" 

The first volume given to readers in that elegant little 
diamond edition, was " Our Mutual Friend." This con- 
tains many fine passages, exquisite in expression, and of 
lofty sentiment. One of those sentences which shines 
like a diamond among pebbles is this : " Evil often 
stops short at itself, and dies with the doer of it ; but 
good, never." When one reads the inimitable stories 
of Dickens with an unprejudiced mind and liberal heart, 
one must adopt the language of Thackeray, and say, — 

" I may quarrel with Mr. Dickens's art a thousand 
times ; I delight and wonder at his genius ; I recognize 
in it — I speak with awe and reverence — a commis- 
sion from that divine Beneficence whose blessed task 
we know it will one day be to wipe every tear from 
every eye. 

" Thankfully I take my share of the feast of love and 
kindness wliich this gentle and generous and charitable 
soul has contributed to the happiness of the Avorld. I 
take and enjoy my share, and say a benediction for the 
meal." 

In order to pass rapidly on to a mention of Mr. Dick- 

22 



338 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

ens as a reader, only a brief extract from " Our Mutual 
Friend " is here inserted. It is the close of the chapter 
speaking of little Johnny's death at the children's hos 
pital : — 

" The family whom God had brought together were 
not all asleep, but were all quiet. From bed to bed, a 
light womanly tread, and a pleasant fresh face, passed in 
the silence of the nic^ht. A little head would lift itself 
up into the softened light here and there, to be kissed 
as the face went by, — for these little patients are very 
loving, — and would then sul^mit itself to be composed 
to rest again. The mite with the broken leg was rest- 
less, and moaned, but, after a while, turned his face 
towards Johnny's bed to fortify himself Avith a view of 
the ark, and fell asleep. Over most of the beds, the 
toys were yet grouped as the children had left them 
when they last laid themselves down ; and, in their inno- 
cent grotesqueness and incongruitj^, they might have 
stood for the children's dreams. 

^' The doctor came in, too, to see how it fared with 
Johnny. And he and Rokesmith stood together, look- 
ing down with compassion upon him. 

" * What is it, Johnny ? ' Rokesmith was the ques- 
tioner, and put an arm round the poor baby as he made 
a struggle. 

" ' Him ! ' said the little fellow. ' Those ! ' 

" The doctor was quick to understand children, and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 339 

taking the horse, the ark, the yellow-bird, and the man 
in the guards, from Johnny's bed, softly j)laced them 
on that of his next neighbor, — the mite with the bro- 
ken leg. 

" With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and with an 
action as if he stretched his little finger out to rest, the 
child heaved his body on the sustaining arm, and, seek- 
ing Kokesmith's face with his lips, said, — 

" ' A kiss for the boofer lady.' 

" Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose of, 
and arranged his affairs in this world, Johnny, thus 
spealdng, left it." 



CHAPTER XV. 

SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. 

Dickens as a Reader and Actor. —His First Appearance in Boston. — His Last 
Reading in Boston. 

"Land of the forest and the rock, 

Of dark blue lake and mighty river, 
Of mountains reared on high to mock 
The storm's career and lightning's shock. 
My own green land forever 1 " 

Whittier. 

" And he took the book . . . and read in the audience of the people." — ExOD. 
xxiv. 7. 

|N December, 1867, Mr. Dickens made his 
second visit to America. His fault in 
writing the "Notes" had been forgiven, 
since the common sense and Christian sen- 
timent of the people acknowledged him to 
be right in most, if not all, his criticisms ; and when he 
came as a reader he was warmly welcomed. The news- 
paper accounts of his appearance and readings will give 
the best idea of them. Of his first reading, " The Bos- 
ton Journal " says, — 

" Tremont Temple was comj)letely filled ; every seat, 

340 




CHARLES DICKENS. 3il 

and nearly every standing-place, front of the platform, 
except the central aisles, having an occupant. The 
wealth, beauty, fashion, and intellect of the city, were 
present in great numbers. Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, 
Quincy, and a host of others of our most eminent citi- 
zens, attended to greet the inimitable ' Boz ' in his new 
character of reader of his own works. The audience 
began to assemble as early as seven o'clock ; but not all 
were seated by eight o'clock: when this was accom- 
plished, the hall presented a magnificent appearance, 
there were so many splendidly-dressed ladies present. 

" The arrangements for the reading were somewhat 
peculiar. On the rear of the platform was a maroon- 
colored screen about fifteen feet long by seven high, and 
a carpet of the same color spread in front. Along the 
front of the platform was a high framework of gas-pipe, 
with burners upon the inner side, and a narrow screen 
i to cast the light upon the distinguished reader. Li the 
\ centre of the platform stood a little crimson-colored 
i^tand, festooned with a bright fringe, with a tiny desk, 
wdiich an open book more than covered, on one corner. 
Upon one side was a shelf, on which stood a glass de- 
canter of water and a tumbler. 

" This purple-hued paraphernalia interested the curi- 
ous and expectant audience till three minutes past eight 
o'clock ; when a slight clapping of hands, like the first 
drops of a shower, announced the coming of ' Boz ' from 
the ante-room. With an elastic step he ascended the plat- 



342 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

form, and moved quickly to his crimson throne ; the ap- 
plause, meanwhile, spreading and deepening till the 
whole audience joined in one universal and enthusiastic 
plaudit, which continued for several minutes. It was as 
cordial a welcome as heart could wish ; and, had Mr. 
Dickens been doubtful about his reception, every appre- 
hension must have vanished as the swelling tide of 
friendly greeting poured its music upon his ear. Al- 
though time has laid a frosting upon his well-kept and 
trimly-shaped beard, and thinned the locks that cover 
his head, Mr. Dickens has still the air and port of a 
young man, — his step firm and free, his bearing erect 
and assured, and his dress the pink of propriety, though 
pervaded by a touch of dandyism. Dressed in a suit of 
faultless black, with two small flowers — one white, the 
other red — deftly attached to his left lappel, a profusion 
of gold chains festooned across his vest, his long goatee 
spreading like a fan beneath his chin, his ear-locks 
standing almost straight from his head, and with a 
countenance still fresh, though no longer youthful, 
Charles Dickens stood, with book in hand, before his 
audience, and gracefully acknowledged the hearty greet- 
ings bestowed upon him. Those who saw him for the 
first time last night hardly realized, we think, their 
ideal of this gifted author. His countenance has not 
that soft, refined, pre-eminently intellectual look wliich 
one who so deeply stirs the finer feelings of our nature 
would naturally be thought to present. The mark of 



CHAELES DICKENS. 343 

genius is not so obvious, at least by gas-light, as an ad- 
mirer would expect. A dasby, good-natured, shrewd 
English face it is, — one that would be associated with 
the out-door life of a smart man of business not particu- 
larly troubled with fine sentiments, and not unmindful 
of good cheer ; brusque, not beautiful, wide awake, and 
honest." 

A lady writer in " The Chicago Advance " thus 
graphically speaks of Dickens at Boston : — 

'' On Tuesday evening, I climbed, for the sake of Da- 
vid Copperfield, and Mr. Bob Sawyer's party, the end- 
less stairs of the Tremont Temple. The kindly fates 
had wafted my ticket to the floor of the house, and to 
the centre of the floor, and so near the platform, ex- 
actly as one would wish to be : so I had but to open my 
eyes, and I saw ; and my ears, and I heard. It is said 
Mr. Dickens's voice by no means fills the hall : the back 
galleries lost a large proportion of his words, and were 
obliged to follow the libretto closely, to understand 
him. 

" The arrangements on the platform are fresh. A 
large screen, of a rich maroon-color, stands as a back- 
ground for the reader. In front of it is a dainty little 
crimson-velvet desk, with a tumbler, and decanter of 
water. Mr. Dickens desires that every one be in his 
seat, and the house still, at ten minutes before eight. A 



344 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

fair approach towards meeting the request is made. At 
eight precisely, the hush deepens. There is a stir, and a 
gush of applause, and we have an idea of a tall gentle- 
man walking very fast across the stage ; and, before we 
have a moment to find out what manner of man he is, 
he has made his bow, and is already telling us in a 
quick voice, with the rising inflection at his commas, 
about those contrivances on Mr. Peggotty's table which 
kept the Bible from tumbling down; and how the Bible, 
if it had tumbled down, would have broken the tea- 
cups. For an instant, the effect is rather funny ; and 
one can think only that he is determined to be on time, 
and let us out at ten o'clock, according to agreement. 

"*' Then we begin to look at him, — a florid-faced, keen- 
looking Englishman, with a bald forehead, — not a re- 
markable forehead, indeed. At first sight, there seems 
to be nothing remarkable about him. Two funny little 
tufts of hair over each ear, and a gray goatee and mus- 
tache ; dress-coat ; immaculate large shirt-front ; a suffi- 
cient display of studs, and watch-chain, and diamond 
rings ; white tie ; white kids, m, not on, his hand ; rose- 
buds, red and white, in his buttonhole ; and red ribbons 
on the little red-bevelled ' Condensed Coj)perfield,' which 
lies upon the desk, scarcely referred to throughout the 
evening. At the first glance, I think quite as much of 
rosebuds and ribbon and watch-guard as of the man's 
face. In three minutes, he might be all rosebuds, and I 
should see only the face. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 345 

" The trouble with IMr. Dickens's books is, that it is 
next to impossible to accomplish such a thing as a selec- 
tion from them. It is like a choice of pearls and opals. 
Here in ' David Copperfield,' we must have Steerforth 
and Little Em'ly, Ham, Mr. Peggotty, Dora, and Mr. 
IMicawber; and where are Peggotty and Barkis and 
Aunt Trotwood and Uriah Heep ? and how in the world 
are we ever going to spare Agnes, with her little keys 
and her quiet eyes ? and how could any other scene be 
chosen before that of the night when Dora and the lit- 
tle spaniel die ? But of course, in two hours, he cannot 
suit everybody ; and we must believe that Mr. Dickens 
made the selections best adapted to dramatic purposes, 
and be content. 

" It is not his voice, but his acting, which is the won- 
der about Mi\ Dickens. His voice is not what a public 
speaker's voice should be : it has no ring to it, and, as I 
said, cannot fill a large hall. But it is a fact scarcely 
disputed, that there is no living actor to be found his 
equal. What is art, and what is felt to be art, upon the 
stage, is nature in him. He invests himself completely 
with each of his characters in turn. They are the chil- 
dren of his brain, a part of himself, dear to him. He 
knows them through : he has wept with them, laughed 
with them, suffered with them, joyed with them, borne 
their temptations, moulded their fortunes, lived their 
lives. They may be fireside friends to his audience: 
they are more than that to him. 



346 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

" He is Steerforth, the gentleman, the villain, at his 
best, at his worst ; he is simple-minded, true-hearted 
Ham, — poor Ham! — saying in his awkward, honest 
way, ' There's not a gentleman in all the land could 
love his lady truer than I love her, sir.' He is INIrs. 
Gummidge, lisping out, that ' every think goes con- 
trairy with her.' Shut your eyes, and you would assert 
that it was an old woman without teeth or hoops, chat- 
tering up there behind the crimson desk. He is dainty 
Dora, drawing a pencil-mo.rk down her husband's nose, 
and declaring in a little petulant sob, that she ' didn't 
marry to be reasoned with, and he is a cruel, cruel boy ! ' 
He is Mr. Sawyer, and Mr. Sawyer's landlady, and INIrs. 
Sawyer's stupid servant, as flawlessly as he is Mr. Peg- 
gotty, searching the world over for his lost Em'ly, and 
rubbing the tears out of his eyes as he tells the story. 

" It is noticeable, that, whatever few mistakes of tone 
or gesture he may make, his face is invariably true. His 
face is a marvel. His audience sit as one man, with their 
eyes upon it. It unfolds, like a panorama, soul upon 
soul, life upon life, crisis upon crisis. It scarcely misin- 
terprets a pain, and always fairly bubbles over with a 
joke. It is a face at prayer one instant ; it 'lights lu- 
ridly with his wicked smile — his very wicked smile — 
the next. It is oftener said of him, perhaps, than of 
any other living man, ' He is a master.' The common 
words come up in threefold force as we watch and 



CHARLES DICKENS. 347 

listen. A master he certainly is ; and the world has 
not many. 

'' Pie has laid Steerforth solemnly dead upon the 
beach, taken his five-minutes' recess, come back with 
the rosebuds superseded by a large red carnation, engi- 
neered poor Mr. Sawyer satisfactorily through his party, 
and punctually at ten o'clock vanished — he and the 
two breathless, bright hours — like a beautiful dream 
from before us." 

Of his last reading in Boston, " The Boston Tran- 
script " thus speaks ; and the account is inserted here 
with a vivid remembrance of the pleasure with which 
that evening was spent : — 

" The Final Reading. — When Mr. Dickens came 
upon the stage last evening, to be greeted by a house as 
packed and as appreciative as that which welcomed his 
first appearance in this city, he found his table covered 
with floral offerings, rare and beautiful as they were 
abundant. He characteristically acknowledged this 
compliment by saying, — 

" ' Before allowing Dr. Marigold to tell his story 
in his own peculiar way, I kiss the kind, fair hands, un- 
known, which have so beautifully decorated my table 
this evening.' 

" The performance that followed was, or many fan- 
cied it was, given with more feeling, especially in the 



348 LTFE AND WRITINGS OP 

pathetic portions, than on previous occasions. Be this 
as it may, it is certain that Cheap Jack, quaint, kindly, 
and tender, even in a sleeve-waistcoat, will ever be a 
reality now to those who have heard his autobiography 
from his own lips ; and Mrs. Gamp will remain here, foj: 
a generation at least, as any thing but a model monthly- 
nurse. 

" The prolonged and enthusiastic applause at the 
close of the reading compelled Mr. Dickens, as he was 
retiring, to turn and come back, and make this graceful 
and feeling speech: — 

" '- Ladies and Crentlemen, — My gracious and generous 
welcome in America, which can never be obliterated 
from my remembrance, began here. My departure be- 
gins here too ; for I assure you that I have never until 
this moment really felt that I am going away. In this 
brief life of ours, it is sad to do almost any thing for the 
last time ; and I cannot conceal from you, although my 
face will so soon be turned towards my native land, and 
to all that makes it dear, that it is a sad consideration 
with me, that, in a very few moments from this time, 
this brilliant hall and all that it contains will fade from 
my view forevermore. But it is my consolation, that 
the spirit of the bright faces, the quick perception, the 
ready response, the generous and the cheering sounds, 
that have made this place delightful to me, will remain ; 
and 3^ou may rely upon it, that that spirit will abide with 
me as Ions: as I have sense and sentiment left. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 349 

" ' I do not say this with any limited reference to 
private friendships that have for years upon years made 
Boston a memorable and beloved spot to me ; for such 
private references have no business in this public place. 
I say it j)^^i'ely in remembrance of and in homage to 
the great public heart before me. 

" ' Ladies and gentlemen, I beg most earnestly, most 
gratefully, and most affectionately, to bid you each and 
all farewell.' 

"With heartiest rounds of applause, mingled with 
cheers, and waving of handkerchiefs, the great assembly 
bade adieu to Mr. Dickens, and gave expression to their 
thanks for the rich enjoyment he had afforded them. 
Thus ended a series of entertainments, of which it is 
enough to say that the expectations raised before they 
began have not been disappointed. The readings 
have proved to be all that was claimed for them ; and 
for their peculiar characteristics, — elaborateness, truth- 
fulness, and finish, as impersonations, — they have stood 
the test of criticism, and been occasions of delight to 
thousands. 

" Mr. Dickens came to this country as an artist, and 
in a professional capacity, to present himself to the 
public as the reciter of his own stories. He has labored 
assiduously in his vocation ; and his visit has proved an 
entire success. His interpretations of his writings will 
increase their already wonderful and deserved popu- 
larity, win to them multitudes of readers to be delighted 



350 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

with tlieir wit, cliaracterizatioris, and pictures of life 
among the lowly. Meanwhile, on account of the hu- 
manity in his works, their appeals to every home and 
every heart, the man as well as the author will continue 
to be the object of warm regard, as one whose genius 
has been consecrated to the service of generous, liberal, 
and unostentatious philanthropy. He will not only be 
cherished as an unequalled humorist and a popular 
novelist, but he will also be held in honor as a genial 
reformer, and the advocate of the largest and truest 
fraternal charity." 

The Dickens excitement was as strong in Philadel- 
phia as it was elsewhere. The speculators mustered in 
force at eleven o'clock, p.m., to secure the tickets which 
were offered at nine the next morning. 

Before leaving America, Mr. Dickens was entertained 
at a handsome banquet at Delmonico's, New York, on 
the evening of April 18, 1868 ; and, in responding to an 
eloquent speech from Mr. Greeley, the distinguished 
guest bore strong and honest testimony to the change 
which twenty-five years had wrought in his estimate of 
America. He said, — 

" This is the confidence I seek to place in you, that 
on my return to England, in my own English journal, 
manfully, promptly, plainly, in my own person to bear, 
for the behoof of my countrymen, such testimony to 



CHARLES DICKENS. 351 

tlie gigantic changes in this conntiy as I have hinted at 
to-night. Also to recall, that wherever I have been, in 
the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been 
received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet 
temper, hospitality, consideration, with unsurpassable 
respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the 
nature of my avocation here, and the state of my health. 
" This testimonj^, so long as I live, and so long as my 
descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall 
cause to be republished as an appendix to every copy 
of those two books of mine in which I have referred to 
America. And this I will do, and cause to be done, not 
in my loving-thankfulness, but because I regard it as an 
act of plain justice and honor." 

Taking leave of -his last American audience, in New 
York, April 20, 1868, Mr. Dickens closed his reading 
with this touching speech : — 

" Ladies and G-entlemen, — The shadow of one word 
has impended over me all the evening ; and the time has 
come al last when that shadow must fall. It is but a 
very short one ; but the weight of such things is not 
measured by their length : and two much shorter words 
express the whole realm of our human existence. "When 
I was reading ' David Copperfield ' here last Thursday 
night, I felt that there was more than usual significance 
for me in Mt. Peggotty's declamation, ' jMy future life 



352 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

lies over the sea.' And, when I closed this book just 
now, I felt keenly that I was shortly to establish such 
an alibi as would even have satisfied the elder Mr. 
Weller himself. The relations that have been set up 
between us here — relations sustained on my side, at 
least, by the most earnest devotion of myself to my 
task; sustained by yourselves, on your side, by the 
readiest sympathy and kindliest acknowledgment — 
must now be broken forever. But I entreat you to be- 
lieve, that, in passing from my sight, you will not pass 
from my memory. I shall often, often recall you as I 
see you now, equally by my winter fire, and in the 
green English summer weather. I shall never recall 
you as a mere public audience, but rather as a host of 
personal friends, and ever with the greatest gratitude, 
tenderness, and consideration. Ladies and gentlemen, 
I beg to bid you farewell. And I pray God bless you, 
and God bless the land in which I have met you ! " 



CHAPTER XVI. 

DICKENS AT HOME. 

His Domestic Relations, — Gad's Hill. — Shakspeare's Mention of it. 

" 'Mid pleasures and palaces, where'er we may roam, 
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home : 
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, 
"Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. 
Home, home, sweet, sweet home I 
There's no place like home, oh ! there's no place like home." 

John Howard Payne. 

" God setteth the solitary in families." — Ps. Ixviii. 6. 

N this side the water, at such a dis- 
tance from the honie of Dickens, and with 
so httle real knowledge of the circum- 
stances relating to his domestic relations, 
it becomes all to judge charitably of both 
parties, where there is any disagreement, and, as a 
general rule, to let such matters alone. Quarrels are 
always to be deprecated ; but there may be extenuating 
circumstances on both sides. " The New- York Evening 
Post " thus refers to the domestic relations of the great 
novelist : — 

23 353 




354 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

) 

/' Mr. Dickens's private life was singularly unobtru- 
sive, and withdrawn from the public eye. Years ago, his 
domestic troubles made his family circle painfully con- 
spicuous before the British people ; and censure was freely 
bestowed upon one or the other party to the deplorable 
conjugal quarrel by the intimate friends of either. But 
Dickens lived down the scandal ; and it is a sufficient 
refutation of it, perhaps, that his children have always 
manifested for him the tenderest affection. One of 
these, a son, has grown to man's estate, and is an hon- 
ored member of society. Another is the wife of Mr. 
Charles Collins, author of ' xifter Dark,' ' A Cruise on 
Wheels,' and other novels, which have been overshad- 
owed by the greater popularity of the writings of his 
brother, Mr. Wilkie Collins. ^ 

" In London, Dickens lived mostly at the Garrick 
Club, where he filled as large a place as John Dryden 
used to fill at Will's Coffee-House. There was at one 
time some alarm created lest he should leave the Gar- 
rick in consequence, as it Avas whispered, of the fact that 
one of his friends and publishers had been blackballed 
there ; but the trouble was composed, and the Garrick 
knew him to the last. His town apartments were com- 
fortably fitted up, but were not in the fashionable quar- 
ter. They constituted the second floor of the house in 
Wellington Street, Strand, the lower part of which was 
occupied by the business-office of ' All the Year Round.' 
Mayfair saw little of Dickens ; nor was Belgravia one of 



CHARLES DICKENS. 355 

his familiar haunts. We believe he was never presented at 
court ; but it was not long ago, — since his last return from 
the United States, — that the queen invited him to come 
and see her ; and he spent a day at Windsor Castle. 

" When in London, Dickens might be seen at dinner 
more frequently than anywhere else, at Verrey's, a res- 
taurant in the upper part of Regent Street, where, often 
with Wilkie Collins, he sat at a little table in the corner 
reserved for him especially by the maitre dliotel. 

"Early in life, — just after the publication of 'Pick- 
wick,' — Mr. Dickens married the daughter of Mr. 
George Hogarth, the author and critic. He separated 
from her in 1858 ; and, as the event called forth a great 
deal of ill-natured comment, the following letter was 
written for the purpose of being shown to the public : — 

" ' ]\Iy Dear , Mrs. Dickens and I have lived un- 
happily together for many years. Hardly any one who 
has known us intimately can fail to have known that we 
are, in all respects of character and temperament, won- 
derfully unsuited to each other. I suppose that no two 
people, not vicious in themselves, ever were joined to- 
gether, who had greater difficulty in understanding one 
another, or who had less in common. An attached 
woman-servant (more friend to both of us than a ser- 
vant), who lived with us sixteen years, and is now married, 
and who was, and still is, in Mrs. Dickens's confidence 
and mine, who had the closest familiar experience of 



356 LIFE AND WHITINGS OF 

this unhappiness in London, in the country, in France, 
in Italy, wherever we have been, j^ear after year,- month 
after month, week after week, day after day, will bear 
testimony to this. 

" ' Nothing has, on many occasions, stood between us 
and a separation, but Mrs. Dickens's sister, Georgine 
Hogarth. From the age of fifteen, she has devoted her- 
self to our house an.d children. She has been their 
j)laymate, nurse, instructress, friend, protectress, adviser, 
and companion. In the manly consideration towards 
Mrs. Dickens which I owe to my wife, I will merely re- 
mark of her, that the peculiarity of her character has 
thrown all the care of the children on some one else. I 
do not know, I cannot by any stretch of fancy imagine, 
what would have become of them but for tliis aunt, 
who has grown up with them, to whom they are devoted, 
and who has sacrificed the best part of her youth and 
life to them. 

" ' She has remonstrated, reasoned, suffered, and 
toiled, and come again, to prevent a separation between 
Mrs. Dickens and me. Mrs. Dickens has often ex- 
pressed to her her sense of her affectionate care and de- 
votion in the house, — never more strongly than in the 
last twelve months. 

" ' For some years past, Mrs. Dickens has been in the 
habit of representing to me, that it would be better for 
her to go away and live apart ; that her always increas- 
ing estrangement made a mental disorder under which 



CHARLES DICKENS. 357 

she sometimes labors ; more, she felt herself unfit for the 
life she had to lead as my wife, and that she would be far 
better away. I have imiformly replied, that she must 
bear our misfortune, and fight the fight out to the end ; 
that the children were the first consideration ; and 
that I feared they must bind us together " in appear- 
ance." 

'' ' At length, within these three weeks, it was sug- 
gested to me by For/ster, that, even for their sakes, it 
would be better to reconstruct and re-arrange the un- 
happy home. I empowered him to treat with Mrs. 
Dickens, as the friend of both us for one and twent}^ 
years. Mrs. Dickens wished to add, on her part, Mark 
Lemon, and did so. On Saturday last, Lemon wrote to 
Forlster, that Mrs. Dickens " gratefully and thankfully 
accepted " the terms I proposed to her. Of the pecu- 
niary part of them, I will say, that they are as generous 
as if Mrs. Dickens were a lady of distinction, and I a 
man of fortune. 

" ' The remaining parts of them are easily described, 
— my eldest boy to live with Mrs. Dickens, and to take 
care of her ; my eldest girl to keep my house ; both my 
girls, and all my children but the eldest son, to live with 
me, in continued companionship of their Aunt Georgine, 
for whom they have all the tenderest affections that I 
have ever seen among young people, and who has a 
higher claim (as I have often declared for many years) 
upon my affection, respect, and gratitude than any- 
body in this world. 



358 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF. 

" ' I hope that no one who may become acquainted with 
what I write here can possibly be so cruel and unjust as 
to put any misconstruction on our separation so far. My 
older children all understand it perfectly, and all accept 
it as inevitable; 

" ' There is not a shadow of doubt or concealment 
among us. My eldest son and I are one as to it all. 

" ' Two wicked persons, who should have spoken very 
diiferently of me, in consideration of earned respect and 
gratitude, have (as I am told, and, indeed, to my 
pesonal knowledge) coupled with this separation the 
name of a young lady for whom I have a great attach- 
ment and regard. I will not repeat the name: I honor 
it too much. Upon my soul and honor, there is not 
upon this earth a more virtuous and spotless creature 
than that young lady. I know her to be innocent and 
pure, and as good as my own daughters. 

" ' Furtlier : I am quite sure that Mrs. Dickens, having 
received this assurance from me, must now believe it, in 
the respect I know her to have for me, and in the perfect 
confidence I know her, in her better moments, to repose 
in my truthfulness. 

" ' On this head, again, there is not a shadow of a 
doubt or concealment between my children and me. All 
is open and plain among us as though we were brothers 
and sisters. They are perfectly certain that I would not 
deceive them ; and the confidence among us is without a 
fear. .' C. D.' " 



CHARLES DICKENS. 359 

One of the sons of Charles Dickens is an officer in the 
British army ; and anotlier is a student at Trinity Hall, 
Cambridge. 

A lady writer in '' The New- York Tribune" thus de- 
scribes a party at the house of Dickens : — 

" It was in June, 1852, just eighteen years before the 
date of his death, that I first saw Charles Dickens in 
London. I had sent a letter to him from his friend, Mr. 
G. P. R. James. Mrs. Dickens called, at his request, and 
invited me to a dinner, kindly promising that I should 
meet a number of the authors and artists that I most 
desired to see. I have in my mind still a perfectly dis- 
tinct picture of the bright, elegant interior of Tavistock 
House, and of its inmates, — of my host himself, then in 
his early prime ; of Mrs. Dickens, a plump, rosy, Eng- 
lish, handsome woman, with a certain air of absent- 
mindedness, yet gentle and kindly ; Miss Hogarth, a 
very lovely person, with charming manners ; and the 
young ladies, then very young, real English girls, fresh 
and simple, and innocent-looking as English daisies. I 
was received in the library. Mr. Dickens — how clearly 
he stands before me now, with his frank, encouraging 
smile, and the light of welcome in his eyes ! — was then 
slight in person, and rather pale than otherwise. The 
symmetrical form of his head, and the fine, spirited 
bearing of the whole figure, struck me at once ; then 
the hearty bonhomie^ the wholesome sv\^eetness of his 



360 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

smile, but, more than any thing else, the great beauty of 
his eyes. They were the eyes of a master, with no 
consciousness of mastery in them : they were brilliant 
without hardness, and searching without sharpness. I 
felt, I always felt, that they read me clearly and deeply, 
3^et could never fear their keen scrutiny. They never 
made you feel uncomfortable. I can but think it a pity, 
that, in so many of the pictures we have of him, the 
effect of his eyes is nearly lost by their being cast down. 
They had in them all the humor and all the humanity of 
the man. You saw in them all the splendid possibilities 
of his genius, all the manly tenderness of his nature. 

" Approaching Mr. Dickens as I did, with what he 
would have considered extravagant hero-worship, I was 
surprised to find myself speedily and entirely at my ease. 
Still he seemed to put forth no effort to make me feel so. 
In manner he was more quiet than I expected, — simple, 
and apparently unconscious. In conversation he was cer- 
tainly not brilliant, after the manner of a professional 
talker. His talk did not bubble with puns, nor scintil- 
late with epigrams ; but it was racy and suggestive, with 
a fine flavor of originality and satire ; and the effect of 
every thing he said was doubled by the expression of 
those wonderful eyes. They were great listening eyes. 
When I remember how they would kindle at even my 
crude criticisms, my awkward attempts to convey to him 
the ideas and emotions which my visit to the Old World 
had called out, I can imagine the eager look, the kindred 



CHARLES DICKENS. 361 

flash, with which they must have responded to the won- 
derful talk of Douglas Jerrold and the lightning-like 
play of his wit, to the splendid cynicism of Caiiyle, to 
the titanic fancies of Landor, to the dramatic word- 
-painting of Browning. At such times, the whole sym- 
pathetic, mobile face must almost have worn the look of 

that of 

' Some watcher of the skies 

When a new planet swims into his ken.* 

" So completely, in his generous appreciation and hos- 
pitable interest, did Mr. Dickens seem to pass out of 
himself, that I had strange difficulty in realizing that he 
was he; that the alert, jaunty figure, dressed with ex- 
treme nicety, and in a style bordering on the ornate, 
and with such elegant and luxurious surroundings, was 
indeed the great friend of the people, the romancer of 
common life ; that the kindly, considerate host who saw 
every thing, heard every thing, was the poetic, dramatic 
novelist, who, next to Shakspeare, had been for years 
the ' god of my idolatry.' 

" I need not here describe that dinner-party. A par- 
tial list of the guests will show how brilliant it must 
have been : Charles Kemble and his daughter Adelaide 
(Madame Sartoris) ; Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 
and his accomplished wife ; Emil Devrient, the great 
German actor ; John Kenyon, the poet-banker ; and his 
grand friend, Walter Savage Landor. . . . 

O night of nights ! I had heard Landor talk, and 



4( 



362 LIFE AKD WEITINGS OF 

Adelaide Kemble sing, and Charles Dickens handed me 
to my carriage, taking leave of me with a ' God bless 
you ! ' and I drove home through the soft summer air 
with my head among the stars." 

Charles Dickens's last earthly home was called Gad's 
Hill. " The London News " tells how he obtained the 
place : — 

" Though not born at Rochester, Mr. Dickens spent 
some portion of his boyhood there, and was wont to tell 
how his father, the late Mr. John Dickens, in the course 
of a country ramble, pointed out to him as a child the 
house at Gad's-hill Place, saying, ' There, my boy, if 
you work, and mind your book, you will perhaps one day 
live in a house like that.' This speech sunk deep ; and 
in after -years, and in the course of his many long 
pedestrian rambles through the lanes and roads of the 
pleasant Kentish country, Mr. Dickens came to regard 
this Gad's-hill house lovingly, and to wish himself its 
possessor. This seemed an impossibility. The property 
was so held, that there was no likelihood of its ever 
coming into the market ; and so Gad's Hill came to be 
alluded to jocularly as rex5resenting a fancy which was 
pleasant enough in dreamland, but would never be 
realized. Meanwhile, the years rolled on, and Gad's 
Hill became almost forgotten ; then a further lapse of 
time, and Mr. Dickens felt a strong wish to settle in the 



CHARLES DICKEiSrS. 363 

country, and determined to let Tavistock House. About 
this time, and by the strangest coincidence, his intimate 
friend and close all}^, Mr. W. H. Wills, chanced to sit 
next to a lady at a London dinner-party, who remarked, in 
the course of conversation, that a house and grounds had 
come into her possession, of which she Avanted to dispose. 
The reader will guess the rest. The house was in Kent, 
was not far from Rochester, had this and that distin- 
guishing feature which made it like Gad's Hill, and like 
no other place ; and the upshot of Mr. Wills's dinner- 
table chit-chat with a lady whom he had never met 
before was, that Charles Dickens realized the dream of 
his youth, and^ became the possessor of Gad's Hill. It 
will now be sold, as well as the valuable collection of 
original pictures which Mr. Dickens gathered together 
during his life, and msmj of which are illustrative of his 
works." 

Gad's Hill is near Rochester, on the London side, and 
about twenty-five miles from London. Donald G. Mit- 
chell, in "Hearth and Home," has given a very pleasant 
picture of Gad's Hill, and Dickens at home. " Dinner 
was a gala-time ; but unceremonious, and regardless of 
dress, as he might be in the earlier hours of the day, 
he, in his latter years at least, kept by the old English 
ceremonial dress for dinner. His butler and servant 
were also habited conventionally ; and the same notion 
of conventional requirement, it will be remembered, he 



364 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

observed always in liis readings and appearance on 
public occasions. But the laws of etiquette, however 
faithfully and constantly followed, did not sit easily on 
him ; and there is no portrait of him, which, to our mind, 
is so agreeable as that which represents him in an old 
loose morning-jacket, leaning against a column of his 
porch upon Gad's Hill, with his family grouped around 
him. As dinner came to its close, the little grand- 
children tottled in, — his ' wenerable ' friends, as he 
delighted to call them ; and with their advent came 
always a rollicking time of cheer." 

Mr. Philp has thus pictured Gad's Hill.' "The 
house is a charming old mansion a little modernized, — . 
the lawn exquisitely beautifid, and illuminated by 
thousands of scarlet geraniums. The estate is covered 
with magnificent old trees ; and several cedars of 
Lebanon I have never seen equalled. In the midst of 
a small plantation across the road, opposite the house, 
approached by a tunnel from the lawn under the turn- 
pike-road, is a French chalet^ sent to Dickens .as a pres- 
ent, in ninety-eight packing-cases. Here Mr. Dickens 
does most of his writing, where he can be perfectly 
quiet, and not disturbed by anybody. I need scarcely 
say that the house is crowded with fine pictures, original 
sketches for his books, choice engravings, &c. ; in fact, 
one miHit be amused for a month in lookiuGr over the 
objects of interest, which are numerous and beautiful. 



CHARLES DICKENS. 365 

Inside tlie hall are iDortions of the scenery painted by 
Stanfield for 'The Frozen Deep,' the play in which 
Dickens and others performed for the benefit of Douglas 
Jerrold's family ; written by Willde Collins. Just as 
you enter, in a neat" frame, written and illuminated by 
Owen Jones, is the following : ' This house, Gad's-hill 
Place, stands on the summit of Shakspeare's Gad's 
Hill, ever memorable for its association, in his noble 
fancy, with Sir John Falstaff. "But, my lads, my lads, 
to-morrow morning, by four o'clock, early at Gad's Hill. 
There are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offer- 
ings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I 
have visors for you all : you have horses for yourselves.' " 
" In the dining-room hangs Frith's original picture of 
Dolly Varden, and Maclise's portrait of Dickens when 
a young man ; also Cattermole's wonderful drawings, 
illustrating some of Dickens's most touching scenes ; 
besides several exquisite works by Marcus Stone (who 
illustrated ' Our Mutual Friend'), David Roberts, Cal- 
lon, Stanfield, and others. My bedroom was the per- 
fection of a sleeping-apartment ; the view across the 
Kentish Hills, with a distant peep at the Thames, 
charming. The screen shutting off the dressing-room 
from the bedroom is covered with proof-impressions, 
neatly framed, of the illustrations to ' Our Mutual 
Friend,' and other works. In every room, I found a 
table covered Avith writing-materials, headed note-paper 
and envelopes, cut quill pens, wax, matches, sealing- 



366 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

wax ; and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are 
magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the 
grounds, — such animals as Landseer would love to paint. 
One of them, Bumble, seems to be a favorite with 
Dickens. They are all named after characters in 
Dickens's works. Dickens at home seems to be per23et- 
ually jolly, and enters into the interests of games with 
all the ardor of a boy. Physically, as well as men- 
tally, he is immensely strong, having quite regained his 
wonted health and strength. He is an immense walker, 
and never seems to be fatigued. He breakfasts at eight 
o'clock; immediately after, answers all the letters re- 
ceived that morning ; writes until one o'clock ; lunches ; 
walks twelve miles (every day) ; dines at six ; and passes 
the evening entertaining his numerous friends." 

In a letter written long ago to a friend in America, he 
thus describes his home : — 

" Divers birds sing here all day, and the nightingales 
all night. The place is lovel}^ and in perfect order. I 
have put five mirrors in the Swiss clidlet (where I 
write), and they reflect and refract, in all kinds of ways, 
the leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the 
great fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river. 
My room is uj) among the branches of the trees ; and 
the birds and the butterflies fly in and out ; and the green 
branches shoot in at the open windows ; and the lights 



CFTARLES DICKENS. 367 

and shadows of the clouds come and go with the rest 
of the company. The scent of the flowers, and, mdeed, 
of every thing that is growing for miles and miles, is 
most delicious." 



CHAPTER XYII. 



THE UNFINISHED STORY. 

Mystery of Edwin Drood.— Sudden Illness. — Death. 

" There is no death : what seems so is transition. 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 
Whose portals we call death." 

LONGFELTiOV. 

O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ? " — 1 COR. xv. 55. 

R. DICKENS'S readings interfered with 
his writing ; and therefore he gave a long- 
ing public no other work till the first num- 
ber of " The Mystery of Edwin Drood," 
which appeared in March, 1870. It was 
to be completed in twelve parts, and was published 
simultaneously in London and in Boston. Only three 
numbers had been published when he passed away. 

It is a remarkable coincidence that the last completed 
work the novelist wrote ended with this paragraph : — 

'"''On Friday^ the 9tJi of June, in the present year, 
Mr. and Mrs. Boffin (in the manuscript-dress of receiv- 




CHARLES DICKENS. 369 

ing Mr. and Mrs. Lammle at breakfast) were in the 
Soutli-Eastern Railway with me in a terribly destructive 
accident. When I had done what I could to help oth- 
ers, I climbed back into my carriage, nearly turned over 
a viaduct, and caught aslant uj)on the turn, to extricate 
the worthy couple. They were much soiled, but other- 
wise unhurt. The same happy result attended Miss 
Bella Wilfer on her wedding-day, and 'Mr. Riderhood 
inspecting Bradley Headstone's red neckerchief as he 
lay asleep. I remember with devout thankfulness, that 
I can never be much nearer parting company with my 
readers forever than I was then, until there shall be 
written against my life the two words with which I 
have closed this book, — the end." 

After his return from America, he continued to give 
readiags in different parts of England ; but on the even- 
ing of March 16 last he brought to a close, at St. James' 
Hall, in London, his series of public readings. He said 
in his remarks at the close, — 

" I have thought it well, at the full flood-tide of your 
favor, to retire upon those older associations between 
us, which date from much farther back than these, and 
henceforth to devote myself exclusively to the art that 
first brought us together. [Great applause.] Ladies 
and gentlemen, in but two short weeks from this time, I 
hope that you may enter, in your own houses, on a new 

24 



370 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

' series of readings,' at which my assistance will be in- 
dispensable ; but from this garish light I vanish now 
forevermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, and 
affectionate farewell." 

Carlyle is " reported as saying, that he never saw nor 
heard of any thing so extraordinary in its way as the 
picturesque-dramatic power of Mr. Dickens in his read- 
ings. ' Mr. Dickens, in some characters,' said his philo- 
sophic observer, ' costumes his mhicl with a completeness 
that is so absolutely perfect.' This puts it into my head 
to tell a little story which I long since heard, — how, one 
evening, the great novelist was reading, I think the trial- 
scene in ' Pickwick,' to an audience of rank and fashion, 
and all that, in London. Presently, rank and fashion 
began to have their attention drawn to an explosive 
merriment in one part of the hall. On the front bench 
sat a tall man, blue-eyed and gray-haired, who ever and 
anon swung his steeple-crowned felt hat forcibly down 
on his knees, bursting into peals of such inextinguisha- 
ble laughter as the gods on Homer's Olympus when 
they beheld limp-footed Vulcan halting round the circle 
as cup-bearer. Rank and fashion were inclined to be 
shocked at this unconventional mirth : but by and by tiie 
whisper went round that lie of the steeple-hat was no 
other than Thomas Carlyle of Chelsea ; and for the rest 
of the evening Mr. Dickens had but a divided attention 
from his reverently wondering audience." 



CHARLES DICKENS. 371 

Messrs. Chapman & Hall write, in correction of 
sundry erroneous reports, to say that three numbers of 
" The Mystery of Edwin Drood," the novel on whicli 
Mr. Dickens was at work when he died, were left com- 
plete, in addition to those already published ; this being 
one-half of the story as it was intended to be written. 
These numbers will be published, and the fragment will 
remain a fragment. Messrs. Chapman & Hall add, "No 
other writer could be permitted by us to complete the 
work which Mr. Dickens has left." 

Says " The New- York Tribune " very truly, " Ten or 
twenty millions of people keep a corner in their hearts 
for Dickens, because he has seen so perfectly the poetrj-, 
the beaut}^, the hundred lessons, which the life of the 
masses contains ; and in all that he has done he has 
striven for their good. ' I have always had, and always 
shall have,' said he on his first visit to this country, 'an 
earnest and true desire to contribute, as far as in me 
lies, to the common stock of healthful cheerfulness and 
enjoyment. I beheve that Virtue shows quite as well 
in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen. 
I believe that she, and every beautiful object in external 
nature, claims some sympathy in the poorest man who 
breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread.' So, in the faith 
that literature was not for the rich alone, and the no- 
blest work was the work done for the poor, he bent 
himseK bravely to his splendid task." 



372 LIFE AND WRrriNGS OF 

Mr. Dickens died on tlie 9th of June, 1870. " The 
London News " thus gives particulars : — 

" He was at Rochester the 7th instant : on Wednes- 
da}^, he was emplo3^ed at his hterary labors until dinner. 
When at dinner, he was seized with a violent pain in 
the head, and fell down, becoming totally unconscious. 
He was placed on a sofa in the dining-room, as it was 
not considered advisable to remove him up stairs. Mr. 
S. Steele of Strood, his local medical adviser, was sent 
for, and found him laboring under a severe form of apo- 
plexy. Stertorous breathing had taken place ; and the 
extremities very soon became cold. Mr. Steele re- 
mained with him until near midnight, when Mr. F. Carr 
Beard, surgeon, of Welbeck Street, London, an old per- 
sonal friend of IMr. Dickens, arrived, with Mrs. Collins 
and Miss Dickens, daughters of the great novelist. Mr. 
Beard immediately consulted with Mr. Steele ; but they 
had little hope. Mr. Dickens was still unconscious, and 
remained in that state up to the time of his death. Mr. 
Beard remained with him all night. Dr. J. Russell 
Reynolds, the eminent physician of Grosvenor Street, 
was telegraphed for, and arrived on Thursday after- 
noon. He agreed with Messrs. Beard and Steele in 
considering the case a hopeless one from the first. His 
death took place at half-past six o'clock. Mr. Dickens 
was well on Wednesday, and wrote a great deal during 
the day. He had lately had no premonitory symptoms 



CHARLES DICKENS. 373 

of an affection of the brain. A post-mortem examination 
is to be made. A contemporary states, that, when Mr. 
Dickens sat down to dinner on AVednesday, his sister- 
in-law, Miss Hogarth, observed an unusnal appearance 
in his face, and became ahirmed, and said she feared he 
was ill, proposing in the same breath to telegraph for 
medical assistance. Mr. Dickens replied, ' No, no, no : 
I have got the toothache, and shall be better presently.' 
He then asked that the window might be shut; and 
almost immediately he lapsed into unconsciousness, from 
which state he never recovered till the moment of his 
death. Mr. Charles Dickens, the younger, was tele- 
graphed for on Wednesday evening ; but the message did 
not reach London till Thursday morning. He started 
instantly for his father's residence, and v/as present at 
the death-bed, with two of his sisters. Miss Hogarth, 
and the medical attendants. The day of his death was, 
strange to say, the anniversary of the Staplehurst acci- 
dent, in which, it will be remembered, he was in great 
peril, and from which some of those nearest to him con- 
sider he received a physical shock from which he never 
really recovered. The friends in the habit of meeting 
Mr. Dickens privately, recall now the energy with which 
he depicted that dreadful scene, and how, as the climax 
of liis story came, and its dread interest grew, he would 
rise from the table, and literally act the parts of the sev- 
eral sufferers to whom he had lent a helping hand. Now 
that he is gone, it is remembered with absolute pain, 



374 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

that one of the first surgeons of the day, who was pres- 
ent when this Staplehurst story was told, soon after its 
occurrence, remarked, that ' the worst of these railway 
accidents was the difficulty of determining the period at 
which the system could be said to have survived tlie 
shock ; and that instances were on record of two or tliree 
years having gone by before the life-sufferer knew that 
he was seriously hurt.' But the medical testimon}^ as to 
the immediate cause of Mr. Dickens's death is definite 
and precise. Apoplexy, an effusion of blood on the brain, 
— the cause an overstrained system, and the result 
one which was only staved off twelve months ago, when 
he was induced to obey his doctor's injunctions, and sus- 
pend his readings^ in public, — has carried him away at a 
comparatively early age ; and all that remains to his sor- 
rowing friends is to recall with affection the many traits 
which made this great man so lovable." 

The cause of the death of Dickens is attributed by 
a London correspondent of " The Scotsman " to the 
mental labor of writing " Edwin Drood." The writer 
says, — 

" Since his sudden seizure in the midst of his read- 
ings last year, Mr. Dickens has never been the same 
man. After a little while, he began to go about as be- 
fore ; flitted to and fro in his ardent, restless way ; took 
long walks, after his favorite fashion, starting on the 



CHARLES DICKENS. 375 

whim of the moment, at any hour, for anywhere ; and 
resumed his writing and other labors, but not with the 
same lightness and vivacity as before. Though a sturdy 
walker, there had always been something of a limp in 
'his gait ; and this now became more marked. He had 
more need of his stick, and stooped perceptibly. He 
grew sooner wearied, both in walking and in work, and 
complained, at times, of a strange supineness of mind, 
and labored slowness with the pen. Those who had 
not seen him for some time were most struck on meet- 
ing him, within the last few months, with the sudden 
whiteness of his hair. From gra}-, he became all at 
once white, — just as Mr. Bright did not long since. I 
saw him a few weeks ago, just before he left town ; and 
his sunburned face seemed set in snow, his beard and 
hair were bleached so perfectly. Beyond question, I 
think it was ' Edwin Drood ' that killed him. He went 
back to work too soon. He had had the idea of the 
story for some time in his mind, I believe ; but, after 
the first impulse of the start was off, he found the de- 
velopment of the incidents and characters slow and 
painful. Within the last week or so, he Avas planning 
much of this. He seemed to make so little progress, 
and at the cost of such an effort. Perhaps it was the 
hot weather, he thought, or he was out of sorts, and 
would get into better trim by and by. But the disorder 
was deeper and more fatal. Even before his illness last 
year, however, he had had warnings of exhaustion. He 



376 LIFE AND WKITINGS. 

suffered, at times, from a terrible sleeplessness, which 
often drove him forth at midnight to walk — his fa- 
vorite remedy for all troubles — till dawn. Like 
Wordsworth, he belonged to the school of peripatetics. 
Much given myself to walking at all hours, I have 
come across him often in his rambles, always marching 
swiftly, with earnest, resolute air, as if bound to be at 
some given spot by the hour and minute ; his quick, 
glancing eye scanning every thing and everj^body. In 
the story of ' The Two Apprentices,' which he wrote 
with Wilkie Collins, he described lii's OAvn restless, im- 
petuous activity, — laborious idleness he called it. All 
tliis wear and tear of writing, public readings, and per- 
petual movement, told even on his elastic and vigorous 
constitution in the end. The American trip brought 
him close upon thirty thousand pounds ; but, otherwise, 
I doubt whether it did him much good. Altogether, 
the strain was too severe. Then came ' Edwin Drood ' 
to put the finishing-stroke to the work." 



CHAPTER XYIII. 



LAST WOEDS. 



Last Letters of Mr. Dickens. — The Queen's Sorro-w. — A Nation mourns. — The 
Funeral of the Great Novelist. 



"There is no name so sweet on earth, 
No name so sweet in heaven, — 
The name before his wondrous birth 
To Christ the Saviour given." 

Anonymous. 

" A name which is above every name."— Phil. ii. 9. 



N the day that Mr. Dickens was seized 
with apoplexy, he wrote the following 
letter : — 



Gad's-Hill Place, Hicham by Rochester, Kent, 

Wednesday, the 8th June, 1870. 

Dear Sir, — It would be quite inconceivable to me, 
but for j^our letter, that any reasonable reader could 
possibly attach a scriptural reference to a passage in a 
book of mine, reproducing a much abused social figure 
of speech, impressed into all sorts of service, on all 
sorts of inappropriate occasions, without the faintest 
connection of it with its original source. I am truly 

377 




378 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

shocked to find that any reader can make the mistake. 
I have always striven in my writings to express venera- 
tion for the life and lessons of our Saviour, because I 
feel it, and because I re-wrote that history for my chil- 
dren, — every one of whom knew it, from having it re- 
peated to them, long before they could read, and almost 
as soon as they could speak. But I have never made 
proclamation of this from the housetops. 

Faithfully yours, 

Charles Dickens. 

He wrote that letter because a friend had written to 
him, calling attention to a passage in " Edwin Drood," 
which, to some readers, appeared to savor of irreverence. 

Charles Dickens, it is said, was never formally con- 
nected with any religious sect ; but his rule w^as to wor- 
ship with the Unitarians. While living in London, he 
attended one of their places of worship regularly, and 
had a family-pew there. He held similar views to 
those of Canon Kingsley, and believed most firmly in 
the final triumph of the Almighty Power and Goodness 
over all evil. He wrote his books, as he once told an 
American whom he met on the Ohio River, to show 
that there was not one beyond the reach of infinite 
mercy ; that, to use his own expression, '' God never 
made any thing too bad to be saved." 

Dean Stanley at the funeral read the following ex- 
tract from his will, dated May 12, 1869 ; — 



CHARLES DICKENS. 379 

" I direct that my name be inscribed in plain English 
letters on my tomb. ... I enjoin my friends on no 
account to make me the subject of any monument, 
memorial, or testimonial whatever. ... I rest my 
claims to the remembrance of my country upon my 
published works, and the remembrance of my friends 
upon their experience of me in addition thereto. . . . 
I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and I exhort my dear 
children to try and guide themselves by the teaching 
of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no 
faith in any man's narroAV construction of its letter." 

" In that simple but sufficient faith," said the dean, 
" Charles Dickens lived and died. In that faith, he 
would have you all live and die also ; and if you have 
learned from his words the eternal value of generosity, 
purity, Idndness, and unselfishness, and to carry them 
out in action, those are the best 'monuments, memo- 
rials, and testimonials ' which you, his fellow-country- 
men, can raise to his memory." 

Well says a writer in " The Gospel Banner," — 
" When Uncle Tom shall lead some soul away from 
Christ, or little Eva lead a troop of children to perdi- 
tion, or Aunt Winnie shut the gates of heaven, which 
are now ajar, against some struggling spirit, it will be 
time enough for stupid pharisees to preach against all 



380 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

fictitious literature (save what is sanctioned by the pub- 
lishing committees of large religious book-concerns), 
and especially against such creations as Little Dorritt, 
Paul, and Little Nell. We cannot form the acquaint- 
ance of such characters, whether in real life or romance, 
without being elevated and enriched by the association. 
He has peopled the world of imagination with visions 
of immortal worth and beauty ; and they will henceforth 
be a part of the heart-treasures of mankind. How could 
he cause his creations to move in the very atmosphere 
of Christianity, and to be moved by its most elevated 
motives, if he himself had not bathed in its light, and 
received its holy influences into his heart ? As well 
could artist bring forth finished photographs from the 
dark caverns of the earth, as any man incarnate the very 
principles and spirit of Christianity in his creations with- 
out himself having tasted of the word of life." 

His personal independence was illustrated by his rela- 
tions with Victoria. The queen was among his admir- 
ers. As an expression of her appreciation, she invited 
him to read to her. He declined with a manl}^ spirit, 
saying that he would not enter any house professionally 
that he could not socially. Afterwards, the queen, 
waiving the etiquette of the court, received him as her 
friend. He could have had a title and high office ; but 
he refused them. 

An incident is mentioned as showing in how great re- 



CHARLES DICKENS. 381 

gard Mr. Dickens, as a man and as an autlior, was held 
by the Queen of England : shortly before his death, he 
sent to her Majesty an edition of his collected works ; 
and when the clerk of the council went to Balmoral 
last week, the queen, knowing the friendship that ex- 
isted between Mr. Dickens and Mr. Helps, showed the 
latter where she had placed the gift of the great novel- 
ist. This was in her private library ; and her Majesty 
expressed her desire that Mr. Helps should inform Mr. 
Dickens of this arrangement. The day after his death, 
she sent a special messenger with a letter of condolence 
to his family. Sadly appropriate are his own words now 
to his friends : — 

"There is nothing — no, nothing — beautiful and good, 
that dies, and is forgotten. An infant, a prattling child, 
dying in its cradle, will live again in the better thoughts 
of those who loved it, and play its part, though its body 
be burned to ashes, or buried in the deepest sea. There 
is not an angel added to the hosts of heaven but does 
its blessed work on earth in those who loved it here. 
Dead ! Oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could 
be traced to ^ their source, how beautiful would even 
death appear ! for how much charity, mercy, and puri- 
fied affection, would be seen to have their growth in 
dusty graves ! " 

Some one has gathered these sweet flowers from Dick- 
ens's writings, and strewn thern on his grave : — 



382 LIFE AND WRITINGS OP 

..." The spirit of the child, returning, innocent and 
radiant, touched the old man with its hand, and beck- 
oned him away." . . . 

..." A cricket sings upon the hearth, a broken 
child's toy lies upon the ground, and nothing else re- 
mains." . . . 

..." I felt my old self as the dead may feel if they 
ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly 
remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite for- 
gotten." . . . 

..." When I die, put near me something that has 
loved the light, and had the sky above it always." . . . 

. . . " Lord, keep my -memory green ! " . . . 

. . . " ' Now,' he murmured, ' I am happy.' He fell 
into a light slumber, and, waking, smiled as before ; 
then spoke of beautiful gardens, which he said stretched 
out before him, and were filled with figures of men, 
women, and many children, all Avith light upon their 
faces ; then whispered that it was Eden, — and so 
died." . . . 

..." Died like a child that had gone to sleep." . . . 

. . . "And began the world, — not this world, oh! 
not this, — the world that sets this right." . . . 

..." Gone before the Father, far beyond the twi- 
light judgment of this world, high above its mists and 
obscurities." . . . 

..." And lay at rest. The solemn stillness was no 
marvel now." . . . 



CHARLES DICKENS. 383 

. . . "It being high water, he went out with the 
tide." . . . 

" Dickens's obsequies were simple, as he desired. The 
news that a special train left Rochester at an early hour 
yesterday morning, and that it carried his remains, was 
soon telegraphed to London : but every arrangement 
had been completed beforehand ; and there was no one 
in the Abbey, no one to follow the three simple mourn- 
ing-coaches and the hearse ; no one to obtrude upon the 
mourners. The waiting-room at Charing-cross Station 
was set apart for the latter for the quarter of an hour 
they remained there ; the abbey doors were closed di- 
rectly they reached it ; and even the mourning-coaches 
were not permitted to wait. A couple of street-cabs, 
and a single brougham, took the funeral-party away 
when the last solemn rites were over; so that passers-by 
were unaware that any ceremony was being conducted : 
and it was not until a good hour after that the south 
transept began to fill. There were no cloaks, no weep- 
ers, no bands, no scarfs, no feathers, — none of the 
dismal frippery of the undertaker. Let the reader turn 
to that portion of ' Great Expectations ' in which the 
funeral of Joe Gargery's wife is described, he will 
there find full details of the miserable things omitted. 
In the same part of the same volume, he will find rever- 
ent allusion to the time when ' these noble passages are 
read which remind humanity how it brought nothing 



384 LIFE AND WKITINGS OF 

into the world, and can take nothing out ; and how it 
fleeth like a shadow, and never continueth long in one 
stay ; ' and will think of the solemn scene in Westminster 
Abbey yesterday morning, with the dean reading our 
solemn burial-service, the organ chiming in subdued 
and low, and the vast place empty, save for the little 
group of heart -stricken people by an open grave. A 
plain oak coffin, w^ith a brass plate bearing the inscrip- 
tion, — 



CHARLES DICKENS, 

Born February 7tu, 1812. 

Died June 9th, 1870. 



a coffin strewed with wreaths and flowers by the female 
mourners, and then dust to dust, and ashes to ashes, 
— such was the funeral of the great man who has 
gone. In coming to the Abbey, in the first coach were 
the late INIr. Dickens's children, — Mr. Charles Dickens, 
jun. ; Mr. Harry Dickens ; Miss Dickens ; Mrs. Charles 
Collins. In the second coach were Mrs. Austin, his sis- 
ter; Mrs. Charles Dickens, jun.; Miss Hogarth, his sis- 
ter-in-law ; Mr. John Forster. In the third coach, Mr. 
Frank Beard, his medical attendant ; Mr. Charles Col- 
lins, his son-in-law; IMr. Ouvry, his solicitor; Mr. Wilkie 
Collins ; Mr. Edmund Dickens, his nephew. 

'' Charles Dickens lies surrounded by poets and men 



CHARLES DICKENS. 385 

of genius. Shakspeare's marble effigy looked yesterday 
into his open grave ; at his feet are Dr. Johnson and 
David Garrick ; his head is by Addison and Handel ; 
while Oliver Goldsmith, Rowe, Southey, Campbell, 
Thomson, Sheridan, Macaulay, and Thackeray, or their 
memorials, encircle him ; and ' Poets' Corner,' the most 
familiar spot in the whole Abbey, has thus received an 
illustrious addition to its peculiar glory. Separated 
from Dickens's grave by the statues of Shakspeare, 
Southey, and Thomson, and close by the door to ' Poets' 
Corner,' are the memorials of Ben Jonson, Dr. Samuel 
Butler, Milton, Spenser, and Gray ; while Chaucer, Dry- 
den, Cowley, Mason, Shadwell, and Prior are hard by, 
and tell the bystander, with their wealth of great names, 
how — 

" ' These poets near our princes sleep, 
And in one grave their mansion keep.' " 



CHAPTER XIX. 



AMERICA S SYMPATHY. 



How the News of Mr. Dickens's Death was received. — Henry "Ward Beecher's Ser- 
mon. — The Voice of the Press. 



" Man is one ; 
And he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel, 
With a gigantic throb athwart the sea, 
Each other's rights and wrongs : thus are we men I " 

Bailey's Festus. 

"And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it." — 1 Cor. xii. 26. 



ITH simple truth " The Monthly Religious 
Magazine " remarks, — 

" It was a great surprise of grief which 
fell upon men of letters, and upon the 
multitude to whom the name of Mr. Dickens had long 
been a synonyme for all that is most charming in the 
literature of fiction, when it was announced that he had 
suddenly ceased from his labors, and fallen asleep. The 
press of two continents, of all shades of opinion, politi- 
cal and religious, though almost stunned by the tidings, 
quickly rallied, as under one universal inspiration, with 

886 




CHARLES DICKENS. 387 

only here and there a dismal exception, to utter its 
grateful memory, and to pour out its miglity sorrow. 

" No single quality so much distinguishes the pages 
of this admired and lamented child of genius as their 
natural, broad, genial, exquisitely delicate and tender 
humanity. Indeed, this is not so much a quality as the 
animating spirit of them, glowing in all their descrip- 
tions, in their incomparable humor, their ready, ingenuous 
Avit, their tearful but quiet pathos. Mankind is his 
debtor, not only for the healthful pleasure which has 
sprung up under the magic of his pen in thousands 
of homes and millions of hearts, but for putting into 
forms so attractive and fascinating so much of the finest 
essence of Christianity. We say this with careful 
deliberation. In all the volumes which Mr. Dickens 
has given to the world, we remember nothing which 
should make a Christian blush or grieve ; whilst we do 
discover pervading them, as electricity the atmosphere, 
the humanities, the charities, the noble aspirations, the 
enriching faiths, the tender and soothing hopes, which 
are the sweet and beautiful vintaQ:e of the True Vine. 
. . . Religion, in the restricted sense of the word, is 
not the only chord in the many-stringed harp of human- 
ity which may lawfully be touched with Christian 
fingers ; but he who brings forth dulcet sounds in due 
proportion from each, blending them all, is master of 
the divine harmonies, and the true ' man of God.' He 
is the real artist, trained for his calling by apprentice- 



388 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

ship to truth, beauty, and love. In the roll of such 
artists, representatives of the best literature, with the 
heartfelt assent of their readers, have hastened to place 
the brilliant and beloved name of Charles Dickens. He 
is at rest ' with kings and counsellors of the earth.' All 
ranks, from the most humble to the most exalted, mourn 
for him, even as they have rejoiced in him ; but they 
mourn, not as though he had just begun liis splendid 
career of beneficent ministration to human happiness, 
but as for one who has finished well the tasks of life ; 
for he had done enough for his fame, and far more than 
his part for humanity ; and, after all, he has left the 
most and the best of himself behind. Let his requiem 
be the thanksgiving-psalms of the vast multitude whose 
eyes have glistened, and whose hearts have throbbed, 
under the wondrous spell of his creative fancy. His 
' funeral anthem,' let it be ' the glad evangel ' of sym- 
pathy with man in his loneliness, want, struggle, sorrow, 
and sin, which his silent word shall preach from genera- 
tion to generation." 

" The Boston Transcript " publishes this extract from 
a private letter from Jean Ingelow : " You know by 
this time the loss we have sustained in the death of 
Charles Dickens. Literature seems to have lost her 
king, and one to whom almost all were loynl. He was 
the lord of laughter and of tears. The old dress in 
which mortals used to be presented to us by authors 



CHARLES DICKENS. 389 

had grown shabby ; but he dressed human nature anew, 
showed it to us as we had never seen it before. He 
made what was homely and lowly draw near to be 
looked at and loved." 

Thus echoes Henry Ward Beecher the cry of mourn- 
ing from across the sea : — 

" His works generally produced a powerful impression 
upon the mau}^ wrongs and vices which they sought to 
remedy. 

" And while the question of Mr. Dickens's spiritual 
work is perhaps one that Ave are not authorized to de- 
cide, and must not decide, and while, certainly, we can- 
not reckon him as among the highest natures, we cannot 
withhold from him our gratitude ; and we cannot but 
be grateful to God for the fact that he was raised up to 
do in a lower sphere a greatly needed work ; which he 
did well. 

" And, having done his work, he passed from the stage 
of life as one might Avish to die, — one moment in the 
full enjoyment of his* faculties, and the next moment 
gone, as it were. I will still cling to that old heresy, the 
Episcopal prayer-book to the contrary notwithstanding. 
I should never pray to God to keep me from sudden death. 
Instead of that, my prayer to God is, that he will cut me 
off suddenly. I do not v/ant to be like an old harness 
that is always broken, that always has to be tied up 



390 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

with strings, or that is always being carried to the shop 
for repairs, and is always good for nothing. At the full 
of life, while yet his mind was vigorous, he was stricken 
down. And he has died at the right time, — at the 
right time for himself, and at the right time for the 
world. He had done his work; and, such as it Avas, Ije 
had done it well. I, for one, thank God for the life of 
Charles Dickens ; and I thank God for his work. 
Though I do not regard it as the highest, I regard it as 
eminently noble and useful. 

" It will always be a pleasant thing for me to remem- 
ber that he spoke in our church, using it as a reading- 
hall." 

A beautiful tribute is that of George William Curtis 
in " Harper's Weekly : " — 

" The great story-teller is the personal friend of the 
world ; and, when he dies, a shadow falls upon every 
home in which his works were familiar, and his name 
tenderly cherished. When the news came that Dickens 
was dead, it was felt that thg one man who was more 
beloved than any of his contemporaries by the English- 
speaking race of to-day was gone. While he yet lay in 
his own house, •unburied, the thoughts of the whole 
civilized world turned solemnly to the silent chamber, 
and gratefully recalled his immense service to mankind. 
What an amazing fame ! What a feeling to inspire ! 



CHAKLES DICKENS. 391 

When Walter Scott drew near his end, he said to his 
son-in-law, Lockhart, as if it were the chief lesson of his 
accumulated experience, 'Be a good man, my dear.' 
Nothing else seemed important then. Charity, patience, 
love, — these he saw, in the dawn of heavenly light, to 
be the only true possessions, the sole real successes. 
And who of all men that ever lived has done more 
to make men good than Charles Dickens ? and what 
praise so pure as that simple truth spoken by his open 
grave ? . . . 

'' Even at the very moment that the cunning hand was 
suddenly stilled forever, how many thousands of readers 
in England and America, as they finished the beautiful 
tenth chapter of ' Edwin Drood,' were declaring that 
Dickens was never so delightful as in his latest work ! 

" And so our friend — the friend of all honest men and 
women stumbling and struggling in the great battle — sud- 
enly ceases from among us, — how much happier for him, 
and for all of us, than the sad decline of the good Sir 
Walter, whose powers were slowly extinguished, star by 
star, before the eyes of all men, who therefore could not 
hear of the end but with a tear of relief! Now we can 
perceive how prophetic was the feeling of sadness with 
which we watched Dickens withdrawing from the plat- 
form at his last reading in Steinway Hall. All the 
evening, as he said, the shadow of one word had im- 
pended over us. He had not faltered for a moment ; 
but, strangely, even Pickwick did not seem gay. The 



392 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

feeling of deep and inexpressible afPection for the man 
who had so nobly made his talent ten talents, and who, 
evidently ill, was now passing from our sight forever, 
overpowered all other emotion. The vast audience 
stood cheering and tearful, as, gravely bowing, and 
refusing all assistance, as if in that final moment he 
wished to confront us alone, the master lingered and 
lingered, and slowly retired. In that moment, after the 
long misunderstanding of years between him and this 
country, and after his wholly manly and generous speech 
at the press dinner, our hearts clasped his, as he and 
Mark Lemon grasped hands over the grave of Thack- 
eray ; and henceforward, and for all the future, there 
was to be nothing in American hearts but boundless 
love and gratitude for Charles Dickens." 

" The Overland Monthly " contained a poetic tribute 
of rare beauty, entitled 

" DICKENS IN CAMP. 

" Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting ; 
The river sang below ; 
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting 
Their minarets of snow. 

" The roaring camp-fire with rude humor painted 

The ruddy tints of health 
On haggard face and form, that drooped and fainted 

In the fierce race for wealth, 



CHARLES DICKENS. 393 

" Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure 

A hoarded volume drew ; 
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure 

To hear the tale anew. 

" And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, 

And as the firelight fell, 
He read aloud the book wherein the master 

Had writ of Little Nell. 

" Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy, for the reader 

Was youngest of them all ; 
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar 

A silence seemed to fixll. 

" The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, 

Listened in every spray ; 
Wliile the whole camp, with Nell, on English meadows 

Wandered, and lost their way. 

" And so in mountain solitudes o'ertaken. 

As by some spell divine. 
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken 

From out the gusty pine. 

" Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire ; 

And he who wrought that spell — 
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire ! 

Ye have one tale to tell. 

" Lost is that camp ; but let its fragrant story 

Blend yith the breath that thrills, 
With hop-vines' incense, all the pensive glory 

That fills the Kentish hills. 



394 LIFE AND WRITINGS. 

" And on that grave where English oak and holly 

And laurel-wreaths intwine, 
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, 

This spray of Western pine." 



CHAPTER XX. 



THE INFLUENCE OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



Sympathy for the Poor. — Love for the Young. — The Golden Rule. 

*' Rugged strength and radiant beauty, 
These were one in Nature's plan : 
Humble toil and heavenward duty, 
These will form the perfect man." 

Mrs. Hale. 

" Love worketh no ill to his neighbor : therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." 
Rom. xiii. 10. 




AMES T. FIELDS bears testimony to the 
unvarying kindness and sympathy, both 
of heart and manner, which were charac- 
teristic of Charles Dickens, and says, — 



" It was his mission to make people happy. AVords 
of good cheer were native to his lips; and he was 
always doing what he could to lighten the lot of all 
who came into his beautiful presence. His talk was 
simple, natural, and direct, never dropping into circum- 
locution nor elocution. 

'* Now that he has gone, whoever has known him in- 

395 



396 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

timately for any considerable period of time will linger 
over liis tender regard for, and his engaging manner 
with, children ; his cheery ' Good-day ! ' to poor people 
whom he happened to be passing in the road ; his trust- 
ful and earnest ' Please God ! ' when he was promising 
himself any special pleasure, like rejoining an old friend, 
or returning again to scenes he loved. At such times, 
his voice had an irresistible pathos in it, and his smile 
diffused a sensation like music." 

The beautiful tribute which Lydia Maria Child paid 
to Charles Dickens in her " Letters from New York," 
so long ago as 1844, deserves a place here. Speaking 
of " The Christmas Carol," she says, — 

" It is a most genial production, — one of the sunniest 
bubbles that ever floated on the stream of light litera- 
ture. The ghost is nothing more nor less than memory. 

" About this ' Carol,' I will tell you ' a merry joy,' as 
Jeremy Taylor was wont to say. Two friends of mine 
proposed to give me a New- Year's present, and asked 
me to choose what it should be. I had certain projects 
in my head for the benefit of another person ; and I an- 
swered, that the most acceptable gift would be a dona- 
' tion to carry out my plans. One of the friends whom 
I addressed was ill pleased with my request. She either 
did not like the object, or she thouglrt I had no right 
thus to change the appropriation of their intended 



CHARLES DICKENS. 397 

bounty. She at once said in a manner extremely la- 
conic and decided, ' I won't give one cent ! ' Her sister 
remonstrated, and represented that the person in ques- 
tion had been very unfortunate. ' There is no use in 
talking to me,' she replied : ' I won't give one cent ! ' 

" Soon after, a neighbor sent in Dickens's ' Christmas 
Carol,' saying it was a new work, and perhaps the ladies 
would like to read it. When the story was carried 
home, the neighbor asked, ' How did you like it ? ' — 'I 
have not much reason to thank you for it,' said she ; 
' for it has cost me three dollars.' — ' And pray, how is 
that ? ' — * I was called upon to contribute towards a 
charitable object which did not in all respects meet my 
approbation. I said I wouldn't give one cent. Sister 
tried to coax me ; but I told her it was of no use, for I 
wouldn't give one cent. But I have read ^' The Christ- 
mas Carol," and now I am obliged to give three dollars.' 

" It is indeed a blessed mission to write books which 
abate prejudices, unlock the human heart, and make the 
kindly sympathies flow freely." 

Useless is it, and worse than useless is it, to attempt 
to gauge the character of Charles Dickens by his pro- 
fession or non-profession of religion. His life and works 
attest that he believed in the golden rule. Well says 
a Chicago writer in " The Liberal Christian," — 

" Wherever the English tongue is spoken, he has 



398 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

gone, helping to make the world brighter and better by 
the gift of his peerless genius ; and the whole world is 
in mourning because he is not. The rare old motto, 
' Speak nought but good of the dead,' comes before us 
now ; and for the sake of all he has been, for the sake 
of all he must continue to be, it were only a loving- 
kindness that can now find expression in no other way, 
to speak nought hut good of the great soul that was too 
human to be faultless, but so tender and pitying, that it 
is the least tribute that can be given to him to see 
through our tears nothing but his virtues. He was the 
children's friend ; and none loved them so well or appre- 
ciated them so well as he. And in that home whither 
he has gone from out our longing hold, there must have 
been a great chorus of sweet child-voices welcoming 
their friend ; and Little Nell and Walter, Paul Dombey, 
and all the dear children that owed their place in the 
world to him, were realities that welcomed him to that 
fairer home. 

"To us who are left, there is only a memory and the 
priceless creations of his pen ; for there can never be 
another to wear his mantle of genius, or to hold us cap- 
tive as he has done." 

"Let us do him no injustice," adds "The Independ- 
ent." "We content ourselves with what he was, — a 
lover of his kind, a friend of the friendless, a champion 



CHARLES DICKENS. 399 

of the poor, tlie degraded, the outcast, the forlorn. His 
career was a prolonged beneficence to his fellow-beings. 
It may be said of his books that they made ' a circum- 
navigation of charity.' 

" We have a special love for each particular one. 
They form a library of remembrance that fills an inner 
niche in our heart of hearts. It is hard to realize that 
the world is to have no more droppings from the same 
pen, which are now ended in the dropping of the pen 
itself." 

Of the many friends of Dickens, perhaps the most 
intimate was Mr. John Forster, the biographer of Gold- 
smith and Landor, to whom Mr. Dickens dedicated the 
last editions of his works ; and it seems likely that upon 
Mr. Forster will devolve the duty of v/riting the life of 
his friend. Meanwhile, this memorial volume, by ,an 
American woman, though but a compilation, will pre- 
sent him in a pleasant light to the homes of America into 
which it shall enter. It shall be closed with a few 
grand words from the eloquent discourse of Rev. Wil- 
liam R. Alger, of Boston, as follows: — 

" Dickens has ever been pre-eminently distinguished 
for the democratic breadth of his affections, which irra- 
diate all his works like a divine sunshine, revealing the 
most beautiful qualities in the lowliest places. He 



400 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

spread his heart out to embrace all that was human, and 
to lift it up for the admiring recognition of the highest. 
His writings honor human nature, and will for ages be 
an influence to increase the sum of human kindness and 
enjoyment. 

" His task is done. It is all peaceful and well with 
him. Advanced above pale envy's threatening reach, 
he recks not how they rave. His works will live ; and 
his name and fame are safe. He who has done so much 
to unfreeze the hearts of the upper classes ; he who 
has written so many passages of tenderness which none 
can read without tears, and thousands have read with 
convvilsive sobs, — will never fail to be remembered 
with affectionate honor. He did well to refuse to be 
baroneted. Kings take not rank from their inferiors : 
they bestow it. 

"I am glad they laid him in Westminster Abbey with 
such democratic simplicity, on that June day, when, as 
their reverential hands bore him through the low arch- 
way, the same English birds that sang to Chaucer, 
Shakspeare, and Milton were warbling from every 
branch and coigne of vantage. With instinctive fitness, 
they buried him in the corner of the poets ; for he, too, 
was a great poet, whose words will make millions enjoy 
nature more, and love men better. How sweet sleep 
was to the worn and sensitive worker ! How unspeak- 
ably welcome was every soothing tone or touch of love I 



CHARLES DICKENS. 401 

And now, deeply and forever, the weary child jrests in 
the embrace of the Infinite Father, where the perfect 
intercommnnication of spirits supersedes every symbol, 
martial and ecclesiastical and literary alike, and all 
truth is at once its own pulpit and preacher." 



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liadies will find the business, after a little experience, botli 
profitable and ag^reeaMe. 



ADDRESS 

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BOSTON 



B. B. RUSSELL'S 

CATALOGUE OF 

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jects. Colored prints may take the eye at first; but there arc none that wear and 
continue to please like a good steel engraving. 

" From Shore to Sliore," an allegorical engraving, suggestive of life's 
journey from childhood to old age. 

In Childhood's hour, with careless joy 

Upon the stream we glide; 
With YonWs bright hopes, we gayly speed 

To reach the other side. 

Manhood looks forth with careful glance ; 

Time steady plies the oar. 
While Old Age calmly waits to hear 

The keel upon the shore. 

Suited to frame 16x203. Price $2.00. 

"Nazareth" (just Issued); very beautifully representing Joseph, Mary, and 
the child Jesus, on their return from Egypt. " And he came and dwelt in a city 
called Nazareth." Suited to frame 16x20?. Price $2.00. 

*' The Babe of Bethlehem," the best representation of the nativity of our 
Saviour ever published. The grouping of the picture is admirably portrayed. The 
figures consist of Joseph, Mary, and the Babe; the shepherds, who have brought a 
sacrificial lamb; and a mother and child as interested spectators: the whole making 
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dren." Suited to frame 16x203. Pric€ $2.00. 

" American Methodism," the only historical picture published to commemo- 
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LIFE OF NAPOLEON III, 

EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH. 

Embracing a Record of nearly all the Important National Events which, have 
occurred in Europe during the last half of a century. 

BY 

JOHN S. C. ABBOTT, 

Author of "History of Napoleon I," "French Revolution," "Civil "War in 
America," " Lives of the Presidents," &c., &c. 



" This work well becomes, in its size and mechanical execution, the subjects of 
which it treats. France of all countries, the French of all nations, and Louia 
Napoleon of all rulers, furnish the most interesting materials for a readable book. 
Those who know with what romance Mr. Abbott's pen invests every subject of 
which it treats may well expect, in this royal octavo, interest as well as information. 
Nor will they be disappointed. The author has had access to all the facilities needed 
for the full development of his subject. From the first Napoleon, the annals of 
France have been full of thrilling interest. The present emperor has become in six- 
teen years the leading spirit in modern history, and is a marvel in himself. Mr. 
Abbott has been careful to give documentary proof for his statements ; and those 
that find fault with his details must blame history, and not the historian." — Port- 
land {Me.) Christian Mirror. 



The book is a royal octavo of about 700 pages ; finely illustrated by nine pure 
line steel engravings, executed in Paris expressly for the work; and sold only by 
subscription. 

For terms, address 

B. B. RUSSELL, Publisher, 

55 Coruliill, Boston, Mass. 



A Book for every Household in America. 



LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS 



OP THE UNITED STATES, 



JProm. "^^ash.ingtoIl to the [Present Time. 



ILI.USTRATED, AND COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. 

BY 
JOHN S. C. ABBOTT, 

Author of the " Civil "War in America," " Life of Napoleon," " History of the 
French Revolution," " Mother at Home," &c., &c. 



" It is hardly necessary to speak well of a book written to carry out a practical 
idea, and by one of the most practical writers in America. There is not a politician, 
a newspaper editor, or intelligent citizen, who will not find this work of vast im- 
portance to him, saving much labor, and therefore time. It is not only a resume of 
the leading events in the characters of those who have presided over the Govern- 
ment, but is accompanied by philosophical reflections, and by what we are pleased 
to notice, — the frank objections of the biographer to such errors as may have been 
committed by these Chief Magistrates. It is a wonder that the idea of such a book 
has not before been carried out; and we are glad that it has fallen into the hands of 
a gentleman whose experience, discrimination, and intelligence qualify him to give 
us a complete and standard work of reference." — Washington Chronicle. 



The work is an octavo volume of 520 pages, handsomely illustrated by eight steel- 
plate illustrations, and thirty-six engravings on wood; and sold exclusively by can- 
vassing Agents. 

For terms, addresa 

B. B. RUSSELL, Publisher, 

65 Cornhill, Boston, Magg. 



THE 



Life of George Peabody: 

CONTAINING A KECORD OF THOSE PRINCELY ACTS OF BENEVOLENCE WHICH 

ENTITLE HIM TO THE GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM OF THE FRIENDS OF 

EDUCATION AND OF THE DESTITUTE, BOTH IN AMERICA, 

THE LAND OF HIS BIRTH, AND ENGLAND, 

the place of his death. 

By PHEBE a. HANAFORD, 
Member of the Essex Institute, and author of '* Life of Lincoln,^' ^c. 

WITH AI^ INTRODUCTION- BY DR. JOSEPH H. HANAFORD. 



The above, copied from the titlepage of the book, fully explains the work. That 
the record of such a life will be instructive and interesting, no one will deny. Mrs. 
Hanaford's ability to perform the task, no one will question. She was well 
known for some years as the editor of " The Ladies' Repository." Her experience 
as a writer and poetess is large; and, being a member of the Essex Institute (an 
association that shared largely the munificence of Mr. Peabody), her facilities 
are ample. 

I need not enlarge upon the desirableness of possessing such a work. As Amer- 
ican citizens, we are proud of the name of George Peabody. And, to place the 
book within reach of the millions, I have published it in style and price suited to 
the times. 

It is unnecessary to present a long list of testimonials : a few will indicate the 
universal favor with which the work is received : — 

"The subject is a most interesting one; and the authoress has made good use of 
the most abundant material at hand." — Boston Traveller. 

" Mrs. Hanaford has had ample facilities for preparing this work ; and her literary 
abilities are widely known. She has succeeded in making a readable, accurate, and 
very desirable book." — Boston Post. 

'' It is a book intended for circulation among the masses; and Mrs. Hanaford has 
written it in a very pleasant and attractive style." — Boston Journal. 

" Every young man should have a copy, and make his character a model for his 
future hie)' — Syracuse Standard. 

" Mrs. Hanaford, by her pleasant and welcome style, has made a book peculiarly 
attractive to the masses ; and everybody will be gratified and benefited by reading 
it." — Northern Advocate. 

" I am quite delighted with the neat style of the books, which came to hand yes- 
terday." — Mrs. E. C. Smithson, New Haven. 

1 am constantly receiving similar notices of the press, and expressions of satis- 
faction from my agents in all parts of the country. 

TERMS OF PUBLICATION. — The work contains 308 pages, 12rao ; illus- 
trated by a fine Steel Portrait of Mr. Peabody, and six other illustrations, including 
his birthplace. Sold only by subscription. 

I^ I^ I O E s. 

Substantially bound in Muslin, $1.50. In Arabesque Morocco, $2.00. 

B. B. RUSSELL, Publisher, 

55 Cornhill, Boston. 



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